The English Spy
The English Spy
Daniel Silva
No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva delivers another stunning thriller in his latest action-packed tale of high stakes international intrigue featuring the inimitable Gabriel Allon.She is an iconic member of the British Royal Family, beloved for her beauty and charitable works, resented by her former husband and his mother, the Queen of England. When a bomb explodes aboard her holiday yacht, British intelligence turns to one man to track down herkiller: legendary spy and assassin Gabriel Allon.Gabriel’s target is Eamon Quinn, a master bomb maker and mercenary of death who sells his services to the highest bidder. Fortunately Gabriel does not pursue him alone; at his side is Christopher Keller, a British commando turned professional assassin who knows Quinn’s murderous handiwork all too well.And though Gabriel does not realize it, he is stalking an old enemy—a cabal of evil that wants nothing more than to see him dead. Gabriel will find it necessary to oblige them, for when a man is out for vengeance, death has its distinct advantages….
Daniel Silva
The English Spy
Copyright (#u4b2a7299-a82f-5ca2-85b7-eb236d09bf93)
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Daniel Silva 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover photographs © Peter Bagi / Gallery Stock (stairwell); Henry Steadman (figure).
Map designed by Leah Nick Springer
Flag illustration © charnsitr/Shutterstock, Inc.
Daniel Silva asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007552337
Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780007552320
Version: 2015-11-17
Dedication (#u4b2a7299-a82f-5ca2-85b7-eb236d09bf93)
For Betsy and Andy Lack.
And, as always, for my wife, Jamie,
and my children, Lily and Nicholas.
Epigraph (#u4b2a7299-a82f-5ca2-85b7-eb236d09bf93)
When a man rubs out a pencil-mark, he should be careful to see that the line is quite obliterated. For if a secret is to be kept, no precautions are too great.
— GRAHAM GREENE, THE MINISTRY OF FEAR
No more tears now; I will think upon revenge.
— MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS
Table of Contents
Cover (#ua1c69d8a-051f-5dc0-8feb-cccd5de15ec3)
Title Page (#u271fb7a4-0e9e-5801-b107-a38e8922a2b1)
Copyright (#u88e56b72-88d3-52ae-bc7f-16b383c366b2)
Dedication (#u054fbe0d-8289-5318-bb6a-ee89d3fb2cb6)
Epigraph (#u304f12c0-b7c2-56bc-b23f-4d45b569ec8c)
Map (#u225e85ba-49ec-5a04-9a52-c95fce6e68e8)
Part One: Death of a Princess (#u66a2192c-01de-593d-b355-3d1b517f89bc)
Chapter 1: Gustavia, Saint Barthélemy (#u52482dae-5560-50cf-a5cc-6098d3c999cd)
Chapter 2: Off the Leeward Islands (#u5a8522cd-4fe7-5057-b565-b0554a2c655e)
Chapter 3: The Caribbean–London (#ucd1c798d-daef-559f-901b-ad93c56192da)
Chapter 4: Vauxhall Cross, London (#ue9be81eb-6abd-5fed-a696-965ef46c34a1)
Chapter 5: Fiumicino Airport, Rome (#ua2aa2e5d-2ca3-5d50-9927-b581cedb89b4)
Chapter 6: Via Gregoriana, Rome (#u6ecfb9fe-ae7c-5732-9bc2-a36e785846fe)
Chapter 7: Via Gregoriana, Rome (#uf260c59b-e1a0-5290-a8aa-f198e0393ff5)
Chapter 8: Via Gregoriana, Rome (#ue31e7bdc-e61e-5584-81a2-accaf432e83d)
Chapter 9: Berlin–Corsica (#u004ac6f4-bd27-5aee-9e1e-f816c137811c)
Chapter 10: Corsica (#u613a3705-47ec-5ca8-8469-d5ccb06bb38f)
Chapter 11: Corsica (#u253afd0e-b333-587c-a19b-fa58ec7e1824)
Chapter 12: Dublin (#u1f3e2a84-a281-51a1-bc36-e733926e2b5c)
Chapter 13: Ballyfermot, Dublin (#ud6cc0604-5a96-5a24-86d9-d807884b50cd)
Chapter 14: Clifden, County Galway (#u82c450cf-9631-5287-bdb6-9877b6e24bbf)
Chapter 15: Thames House, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16: Clifden, County Galway (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17: Clifden, County Galway (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18: Omagh, Northern Ireland (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19: Great Victoria Street, Belfast (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20: The Ardoyne, West Belfast (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21: The Ardoyne, West Belfast (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22: Warring Street, Belfast (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23: Belfast–Lisbon (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24: Bairro Alto, Lisbon (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25: Bairro Alto, Lisbon (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26: Heathrow Airport, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27: Brompton Road, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two: Death of a Spy (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28: London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29: Dartmoor, Devon (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30: Wormwood Cottage, Dartmoor (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31: Wormwood Cottage, Dartmoor (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32: Wormwood Cottage, Dartmoor (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33: Gunwalloe Cove, Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34: Gunwalloe Cove, Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35: Gunwalloe Cove, Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36: Highgate, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37: Wormwood Cottage, Dartmoor (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38: London–the Kremlin (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39: London–Vienna (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40: Intercontinental Hotel, Vienna (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41: Lower Austria (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42: Lower Austria (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43: Lower Austria (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44: Sparrow Hills, Moscow (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45: Copenhagen, Denmark (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46: Vienna (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47: Vienna (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48: Vienna (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49: Rotterdam, the Netherlands (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50: Vienna–Hamburg (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51: Piccadilly, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52: Fleetwood, England (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53: Thames House, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54: Lord Street, Fleetwood (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55: Hamburg (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 56: Neustadt, Hamburg (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 57: Hamburg (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 58: Hamburg (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 59: Northern Germany (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Three: Bandit Country (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 60: Vauxhall Cross, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 61: Bristol, England (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 62: 10 Downing Street (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 63: Cornwall, England (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 64: Guy’s Hospital, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 65: Gunwalloe Cove, Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 66: Thames House, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 67: West Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 68: Gunwalloe Cove, Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 69: Gunwalloe Cove, Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 70: County Down, Northern Ireland (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 71: The Ardoyne, West Belfast (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 72: Crossmaglen, County Armagh (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 73: The Ardoyne, West Belfast (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 74: Crossmaglen, County Armagh (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 75: Union Street, Belfast (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 76: Creggan Forest, County Antrim (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 77: Randalstown, County Antrim (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 78: Crossmaglen, South Armagh (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 79: Crossmaglen, South Armagh (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Four: Home (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 80: South Armagh–London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 81: Victoria Road, South Kensington (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 82: Narkiss Street, Jerusalem (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 83: Narkiss Street, Jerusalem (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 84: Mount Herzl, Jerusalem (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 85: Buenos Aires (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading ... (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also Written by Daniel Silva (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PART ONE (#u4b2a7299-a82f-5ca2-85b7-eb236d09bf93)
DEATH OF A PRINCESS (#u4b2a7299-a82f-5ca2-85b7-eb236d09bf93)
1 (#u4b2a7299-a82f-5ca2-85b7-eb236d09bf93)
GUSTAVIA, SAINT BARTHÉLEMY (#u4b2a7299-a82f-5ca2-85b7-eb236d09bf93)
NONE OF IT WOULD HAVE happened if Spider Barnes hadn’t tied one on at Eddy’s two nights before the Aurora was due to set sail. Spider was regarded as the finest waterborne chef in the entire Caribbean, irascible but altogether irreplaceable, a mad genius in a starched white jacket and apron. Spider, you see, was classically trained. Spider had done a stint in Paris. Spider had done London. Spider had done New York, San Francisco, and an unhappy layover in Miami before leaving the restaurant biz for good and taking to the freedom of the sea. He worked the big charters now, the kind of boats the film stars, rappers, moguls, and poseurs rented whenever they wanted to impress. And when Spider wasn’t behind his stove, he was invariably propped atop one of the better bar stools on dry land. Eddy’s was in his top five in the Caribbean Basin, perhaps his top five worldwide. He started at seven o’clock that evening with a few beers, blew a reefer in the shadowed garden at nine, and at ten was contemplating his first glass of vanilla rum. All seemed right with the world. Spider Barnes was buzzed and in paradise.
But then he spotted Veronica, and the evening took a dangerous turn. She was new to the island, a lost girl, a European of uncertain provenance who served drinks to day-trippers at the dive bar next door. She was pretty, though—pretty as a floral garnish, Spider remarked to his nameless drinking companion—and he lost his heart to her in ten seconds flat. He proposed marriage, which was Spider’s favorite approach, and when she turned him down he suggested a roll in the sheets instead. Somehow it worked, and the two were seen teetering into a torrential downpour at midnight. And that was the last time anyone laid eyes on him, at 12:03 a.m. on a wet night in Gustavia, soaked to the skin, drunk and in love yet again.
The captain of the Aurora, a 154-foot luxury motor yacht based out of Nassau, was a man called Ogilvy—Reginald Ogilvy, ex–Royal Navy, a benevolent dictator who slept with a copy of the rulebook on his bedside table, along with his grandfather’s King James Bible. He had never cared for Spider Barnes, never less so than at nine the next morning when Spider failed to appear at the regular meeting of the crew and cabin staff. It was no ordinary meeting, for the Aurora was being made ready for a very important guest. Only Ogilvy knew her identity. He also knew that her party would include a team of security men and that she was demanding, to say the least, which explained why he was alarmed by the absence of his renowned chef.
Ogilvy informed the Gustavia harbormaster of the situation, and the harbormaster duly informed the local gendarmerie. A pair of officers knocked on the door of Veronica’s little hillside cottage, but there was no sign of her either. Next they undertook a search of the various spots on the island where the drunken and brokenhearted typically washed ashore after a night of debauchery. A red-faced Swede at Le Select claimed to have bought Spider a Heineken that very morning. Someone else said he saw him stalking the beach at Colombier, and there was a report, never confirmed, of an inconsolable creature baying at the moon in the wilds of Toiny.
The gendarmes faithfully followed each lead. Then they scoured the island from north to south, stem to stern, all to no avail. A few minutes after sundown, Reginald Ogilvy informed the crew of the Aurora that Spider Barnes had vanished and that a suitable replacement would have to be found in short order. The crew fanned out across the island, from the waterside eateries of Gustavia to the beach shacks of the Grand Cul-de-Sac. And by nine that evening, in the unlikeliest of places, they had found their man.
He had arrived on the island at the height of hurricane season and settled into the clapboard cottage at the far end of the beach at Lorient. He had no possessions other than a canvas duffel bag, a stack of well-read books, a shortwave radio, and a rattletrap motor scooter that he’d acquired in Gustavia for a few grimy banknotes and a smile. The books were thick, weighty, and learned; the radio was of a quality rarely seen any longer. Late at night, when he sat on his sagging veranda reading by the light of his battery-powered lamp, the sound of music floated above the rustle of the palm fronds and the gentle slap and recession of the surf. Jazz and classical, mainly, sometimes a bit of reggae from the stations across the water. At the top of every hour he would lower his book and listen intently to the news on the BBC. Then, when the bulletin was over, he would search the airwaves for something to his liking, and the palm trees and the sea would once again dance to the rhythm of his music.
At first, it was unclear as to whether he was vacationing, passing through, hiding out, or planning to make the island his permanent address. Money seemed not to be an issue. In the morning, when he dropped by the boulangerie for his bread and coffee, he always tipped the girls generously. And in the afternoon, when he stopped at the little market near the cemetery for his German beer and American cigarettes, he never bothered to collect the loose change that came rattling out of the automatic dispenser. His French was reasonable but tinged with an accent no one could quite place. His Spanish, which he spoke to the Dominican who worked the counter at JoJo Burger, was much better, but still there was that accent. The girls at the boulangerie decided he was an Australian, but the boys at JoJo Burger reckoned he was an Afrikaner. They were all over the Caribbean, the Afrikaners. Decent folk for the most part, but a few of them had business interests that were less than legal.
His days, while shapeless, seemed not entirely without purpose. He took his breakfast at the boulangerie, he stopped by the newsstand in Saint-Jean to collect a stack of day-old English and American papers, he did his rigorous exercises on the beach, he read his dense volumes of literature and history with a bucket hat pulled low over his eyes. And once he rented a whaler and spent the afternoon snorkeling on the islet of Tortu. But his idleness appeared forced rather than voluntary. He seemed like a wounded soldier longing to return to the battlefield, an exile dreaming of his lost homeland, wherever that homeland might be.
According to Jean-Marc, a customs officer at the airport, he had arrived on a flight from Guadeloupe in possession of a valid Venezuelan passport bearing the peculiar name Colin Hernandez. It seemed he was the product of a brief marriage between an Anglo-Irish mother and a Spanish father. The mother had fancied herself a poet; the father had done something shady with money. Colin had loathed the old man, but he spoke of the mother as though canonization were a mere formality. He carried her photograph in his billfold. The towheaded boy on her lap didn’t look much like Colin, but time was like that.
The passport listed his age at thirty-eight, which seemed about right, and his occupation as “businessman,” which could mean just about anything. The girls from the boulangerie reckoned he was a writer in search of inspiration. How else to explain the fact that he was almost never without a book? But the girls from the market conjured up a wild theory, wholly unsupported, that he had murdered a man on Guadeloupe and was hiding out on Saint Barthélemy until the storm had passed. The Dominican from JoJo Burger, who was in hiding himself, found the hypothesis laughable. Colin Hernandez, he declared, was just another shiftless layabout living off the trust fund of a father he hated. He would stay until he grew bored, or until his finances grew thin. Then he would fly off to somewhere else, and within a day or two they would struggle to recall his name.
Finally, a month to the day after his arrival, there was a slight change in his routine. After taking his lunch at JoJo Burger, he went to the hair salon in Saint-Jean, and when he emerged his shaggy black mane was shorn, sculpted, and lustrously oiled. Next morning, when he appeared at the boulangerie, he was freshly shaved and dressed in khaki trousers and a crisp white shirt. He had his usual breakfast—a large bowl of café crème and a loaf of coarse country bread—and lingered over the previous day’s London Times. Then, instead of returning to his cottage, he mounted his motor scooter and sped into Gustavia. And by noon that day, it was finally clear why the man called Colin Hernandez had come to Saint Barthélemy.
He went first to the stately old Hotel Carl Gustaf, but the head chef, after learning he had no formal training, refused to grant him an interview. The owners of Maya’s turned him politely away, as did the management of the Wall House, Ocean, and La Cantina. He tried La Plage, but La Plage wasn’t interested. Neither were the Eden Rock, the Guanahani, La Crêperie, Le Jardin, or Le Grain de Sel, the lonely outpost overlooking the salt marshes of Saline. Even La Gloriette, founded by a political exile, wanted nothing to do with him.
Undeterred, he tried his luck at the undiscovered gems of the island: the airport snack bar, the Creole joint across the street, the little pizza-and-panini hut in the parking lot of L’Oasis supermarket. And it was there fortune finally smiled upon him, for he learned that the chef at Le Piment had stormed off the job after a long-simmering dispute over hours and salary. By four o’clock that afternoon, after demonstrating his skills in Le Piment’s birdhouse of a kitchen, he was gainfully employed. He worked his first shift that same evening. The reviews were universally glowing.
In fact, it did not take long for word of his culinary prowess to make its way round the little island. Le Piment, once the province of locals and habitués, was soon overflowing with a newfound clientele, all of whom sang the praises of the mysterious new chef with the peculiar Anglo-Spanish name. The Carl Gustaf tried to poach him, as did the Eden Rock, the Guanahani, and La Plage, all without success. Therefore, Reginald Ogilvy, captain of the Aurora, was in a pessimistic mood when he appeared at Le Piment without a reservation the night after the disappearance of Spider Barnes. He was forced to cool his heels for thirty minutes at the bar before finally being granted a table. He ordered three appetizers and three entrées. Then, after sampling each, he requested a brief word with the chef. Ten minutes elapsed before his wish was granted.
“Hungry?” asked the man called Colin Hernandez, looking down at the plates of food.
“Not really.”
“So why are you here?”
“I wanted to see if you were as good as everyone seems to think you are.”
Ogilvy extended his hand and introduced himself—rank and name, followed by the name of his boat. The man called Colin Hernandez raised an eyebrow quizzically.
“The Aurora is Spider Barnes’s boat, isn’t it?”
“You know Spider?”
“I think I had a drink with him once.”
“You weren’t alone.”
Ogilvy took stock of the figure standing before him. He was compact, hard, formidable. To the Englishman’s sharp eye, he seemed like a man who had sailed in rough seas. His brow was dark and thick; his jaw was sturdy and resolute. It was a face, thought Ogilvy, that had been built to take a punch.
“You’re Venezuelan,” he said.
“Says who?”
“Says everyone who refused to hire you when you were looking for a job.”
Ogilvy’s eyes moved from the face to the hand resting on the back of the chair opposite. There was no evidence of tattooing, which he saw as a positive sign. Ogilvy regarded the modern culture of ink as a form of self-mutilation.
“Do you drink?” he asked.
“Not like Spider.”
“Married?”
“Only once.”
“Children?”
“God, no.”
“Vices?”
“Coltrane and Monk.”
“Ever killed anyone?”
“Not that I can recall.”
He said this with a smile. Reginald Ogilvy smiled in return.
“I’m wondering whether I might tempt you away from all this,” he said, glancing around the modest open-air dining room. “I’m prepared to pay you a generous salary. And when we’re not at sea, you’ll have plenty of free time to do whatever it is you like to do when you’re not cooking.”
“How generous?”
“Two thousand a week.”
“How much was Spider making?”
“Three,” replied Ogilvy after a moment’s hesitation. “But Spider was with me for two seasons.”
“He’s not with you now, is he?”
Ogilvy made a show of deliberation. “Three it is,” he said. “But I need you to start right away.”
“When do you sail?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“In that case,” said the man called Colin Hernandez, “I suppose you’ll have to pay me four.”
Reginald Ogilvy, captain of the Aurora, surveyed the plates of food before rising gravely to his feet. “Eight o’clock,” he said. “Don’t be late.”
François, the quick-tempered Marseilles-born owner of Le Piment, did not take the news well. There was a string of affronts delivered in the rapid-fire patois of the south. There were promises of reprisals. And then there was the bottle of rather good Bordeaux, empty, that shattered into a thousand shards of emerald when hurled against the wall of the tiny kitchen. Later, François would deny he had been aiming at his departing chef. But Isabelle, a waitress who witnessed the incident, would call into question his version of events. François, she swore, had flung the bottle dagger-like directly at the head of Monsieur Hernandez. And Monsieur Hernandez, she recalled, had evaded the object with a movement that was so small and swift it occurred in the blink of an eye. Afterward, he had glared coldly at François for a long moment as though deciding how best to break his neck. Then, calmly, he had removed his spotless white kitchen apron and climbed aboard his motor scooter.
He spent the remainder of that night on the veranda of his cottage, reading by the light of his hurricane lamp. And at the top of every hour, he lowered his book and listened to the news on the BBC as the waves slapped and receded on the beach and the palm fronds hissed in the night wind. In the morning, after an invigorating swim in the sea, he showered, dressed, and packed his belongings into his canvas duffel: his clothing, his books, his radio. In addition, he packed two items that had been left for him on the islet of Tortu: a Stechkin 9mm pistol with a silencer screwed into the barrel, and a rectangular parcel, twelve inches by twenty. The parcel weighed sixteen pounds exactly. He placed it in the center of the duffel so it would remain balanced when carried.
He left the beach at Lorient for the last time at half past seven and, with the duffel resting upon his knees, rode into Gustavia. The Aurora sparkled at the edge of the harbor. He boarded at ten minutes to eight and was shown to his cabin by his sous-chef, a thin English girl with the unlikely name Amelia List. He stowed his possessions in the cupboard—including the Stechkin pistol and the sixteen-pound parcel—and dressed in the chef’s trousers and tunic that had been laid upon his berth. Amelia List was waiting in the corridor when he emerged. She escorted him to the galley and led him on a tour of the dry goods pantry, the walk-in refrigerator, and the storeroom filled with wine. It was there, in the cool darkness, that he had his first sexual thought about the English girl in the crisp white uniform. He did nothing to dispel it. He had been celibate for so many months that he could scarcely recall what it felt like to touch a woman’s hair or caress the flesh of a defenseless breast.
A few minutes before ten o’clock there came an announcement over the ship’s intercom instructing all members of the crew to report to the afterdeck. The man called Colin Hernandez followed Amelia List outside and was standing next to her when two black Range Rovers braked to a halt at Aurora’s stern. From the first emerged two giggling sunburned girls and a pale florid-faced man in his forties who was holding the straps of a pink beach bag in one hand and the neck of an open bottle of champagne in the other. Two athletic-looking men spilled from the second Rover, followed a moment later by a woman who looked to be suffering from a case of terminal melancholia. She wore a peach-colored dress that left the impression of partial nudity, a wide-brimmed hat that shadowed her slender shoulders, and large opaque sunglasses that concealed much of her porcelain face. Even so, she was instantly recognizable. Her profile betrayed her, the profile so admired by the fashion photographers and the paparazzi who stalked her every move. There were no paparazzi present that morning. For once she had eluded them.
She stepped aboard the Aurora as though she were stepping over an open grave and slipped past the assembled crew without a word or glance, passing so close to the man called Colin Hernandez he had to suppress an urge to touch her to make certain she was real and not a hologram. Five minutes later the Aurora eased into the harbor, and by noon the enchanted island of Saint Barthélemy was a lump of brown-green on the horizon. Stretched topless upon the foredeck, drink in hand, her flawless skin baking in the sun, was the most famous woman in the world. And one deck below, preparing an appetizer of tuna tartare, cucumber, and pineapple, was the man who was going to kill her.
2 (#ulink_9b9f5466-fe88-57ef-97fd-da168e26b386)
OFF THE LEEWARD ISLANDS (#ulink_9b9f5466-fe88-57ef-97fd-da168e26b386)
EVERYONE KNEW THE STORY. AND even those who pretended not to care, or expressed disdain over her worldwide cult of devotion, knew every sordid detail. She was the immensely shy and beautiful middle-class girl from Kent who had managed to find her way to Cambridge, and he was the handsome and slightly older future king of England. They had met at a campus debate having something to do with the environment, and, according to the legend, the future king was instantly smitten. A lengthy courtship followed, quiet and discreet. The girl was vetted by the future king’s people; the future king, by hers. Finally, one of the naughtier tabloids managed to snap a photograph of the couple leaving the Duke of Rutland’s annual summer ball at Belvoir Castle. Buckingham Palace released a bland piece of paper confirming the obvious, that the future king and the middle-class girl with no aristocratic blood in her veins were dating. Then, a month later, with the tabloids ablaze with rumors and speculation, the palace announced that the middle-class girl and the future king planned to marry.
They were wed at St. Paul’s Cathedral on a morning in June when the skies of southern England poured with black rain. Later, when things fell apart, there were some in the British press who would write that they were doomed from the start. The girl, by temperament and breeding, was wholly unsuited for life in the royal fishbowl; and the future king, for all the same reasons, was equally unsuited for marriage. He had many lovers, too many to count, and the girl punished him by taking one of her security guards to her bed. The future king, when told of the affair, banished the guard to a lonely outpost in Scotland. Distraught, the girl attempted suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping tablets and was rushed to the emergency room at St. Anne’s Hospital. Buckingham Palace announced she was suffering from dehydration caused by a bout of influenza. When asked to explain why her husband had not visited her in the hospital, the palace murmured something about a scheduling conflict. The statement raised far more questions than it answered.
Upon her release, it became obvious to royal watchers that all was not well with the future king’s beautiful wife. Even so, she performed her marital duty by bearing him two heirs, a son and a daughter, both delivered after abbreviated and difficult pregnancies. The king showed his gratitude by returning to the bed of a woman to whom he had once proposed marriage, and the princess retaliated by attaining a global celebrity that eclipsed that of the king’s sainted mother. She traveled the world in support of noble causes, a horde of reporters and photographers hanging on her every word and movement, and yet all the while no one seemed to notice she was sliding toward something like madness. Finally, with her blessing and quiet assistance, it all came spilling onto the pages of a tell-all book: her husband’s infidelities, the bouts of depression, the suicide attempts, the eating disorder brought on by her constant exposure to the press and public. The future king, incensed, engineered a stream of retaliatory press leaks about his wife’s erratic behavior. Then came the coup de grâce, the recording of a passionate telephone conversation between the princess and her favorite lover. By then, the Queen had had enough. With the monarchy in jeopardy, she asked the couple to divorce as quickly as possible. They did so a month later. Buckingham Palace, without a trace of irony, issued a statement declaring the termination of the royal marriage “amicable.”
The princess was permitted to keep her apartments in Kensington Palace but was stripped of the title Her Royal Highness. The Queen offered her a second-tier honorific but she refused it, preferring instead to be called by her given name. She even shed her SO14 bodyguards, for she viewed them more as spies than protectors of her security. The palace quietly kept tabs on her movements and associations, as did British intelligence, which viewed her more as a nuisance than a threat to the realm.
In public, she was the radiant face of global compassion. But behind closed doors she drank too much and surrounded herself with an entourage that one royal adviser described as “Eurorubbish.” On this trip, however, her retinue of companions was smaller than usual. The two sunburned women were childhood friends; the man who boarded Aurora with an open bottle of champagne was Simon Hastings-Clarke, the grotesquely wealthy viscount who supported her in the style to which she had become accustomed. It was Hastings-Clarke who flew her privately around the world on his fleet of jets, and Hastings-Clarke who footed the bill for her bodyguards. The two men who accompanied them to the Caribbean were employed by a private security firm in London. Before leaving Gustavia, they had subjected the Aurora and its crew to only a cursory inspection. Of the man called Colin Hernandez, they asked a single question: “What are we having for lunch?”
At the request of the former princess, it was a light buffet, though neither she nor her companions seemed terribly interested in it. They drank a great deal that afternoon, roasting their bodies in the harsh sun of the foredeck, until a rainstorm drove them laughing to their staterooms. They remained there until nine that evening, when they emerged dressed and groomed as though for a garden party in Somerset. They had cocktails and canapés on the afterdeck and then repaired to the main salon for dinner: salad with truffle-infused vinaigrette, followed by lobster risotto and rack of lamb with artichoke, lemon forte, courgette, and piment d’argile. The former princess and her companions declared the meal magnificent and demanded an appearance by the chef. When finally he appeared, they serenaded him with childlike applause.
“What will you make us tomorrow night?” asked the former princess.
“It’s a surprise,” he replied in his peculiar accent.
“Oh, good,” she said, fixing him with the same smile he had seen on countless magazine covers. “I do like surprises.”
They were a small crew, eight in all, and it was the responsibility of the chef and his assistant to see to the china, the stemware, the silver, the pots and pans, and the cooking utensils. They stood side by side at the basin long after the former princess and her companions had turned in, their hands occasionally touching beneath the warm soapy water, her bony hip pressing against his thigh. And once, as they squeezed past one another in the linen cabinet, her firm nipples traced two lines across his back, sending a charge of electricity and blood to his groin. They retired to their cabins alone, but a few minutes later he heard a butterfly tap at his door. She took him without a sound. It was like performing the act of love with a mute.
“Maybe this was a mistake,” she whispered into his ear when they had finished.
“Why would you say that?”
“Because we’re going to be working together for a long time.”
“Not so long.”
“You’re not planning to stay?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
He said nothing more. She laid her head on his chest and closed her eyes.
“You can’t stay here,” he said.
“I know,” she answered drowsily. “Just for a little while.”
He lay motionless for a long time after, Amelia List sleeping on his chest, the Aurora rising and falling beneath him, his mind working through the details of what was to come. Finally, at three o’clock, he eased from the berth and padded naked across the cabin to the cupboard. Soundlessly, he dressed in black trousers, a woolen sweater, and a dark waterproof coat. Then he removed the wrapper from the parcel—the parcel measuring twelve inches by twenty and weighing sixteen pounds precisely—and engaged the power source and the timer on the detonator. He returned the parcel to the cupboard and was reaching for the Stechkin pistol when he heard the girl stir behind him. He turned slowly and stared at her in the darkness.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Go back to sleep.”
“I saw a red light.”
“It was my radio.”
“Why are you listening to the radio at three in the morning?”
Before he could answer, the bedside lamp flared. Her eyes flashed across his dark clothing before settling on the silenced gun that was still in his hand. She opened her mouth to scream, but he placed his palm heavily across her face before any sound could escape. As she struggled to free herself from his grasp, he whispered soothingly into her ear. “Don’t worry, my love,” he was saying. “It will only hurt a little.”
Her eyes widened in terror. Then he twisted her head violently to the left, severing her spinal cord, and held her gently as she died.
It was not the custom of Reginald Ogilvy to stand the lonely hours of the middle watch, but concern for the safety of his famous passenger drove him to the bridge of the Aurora early that morning. He was checking the weather forecast on an onboard computer, a fresh cup of coffee in his hand, when the man called Colin Hernandez appeared at the top of the companionway, dressed entirely in black. Ogilvy looked up sharply and asked, “What are you doing here?” But he received no reply other than two rounds from the silenced Stechkin that pierced the front of his uniform and mauled his heart.
The coffee cup clattered loudly to the floor; Ogilvy, instantly dead, thudded heavily next to it. His killer moved calmly to the console, made a slight adjustment to the ship’s heading, and retreated down the companionway. The main deck was deserted, no other crew members on duty. He lowered one of the Zodiac dinghies into the black sea, clambered aboard, and released the line.
Adrift, he bobbed beneath a canopy of diamond-white stars, watching the Aurora slicing eastward toward the shipping lanes of the Atlantic, pilotless, a ghost ship. He checked the luminous face of his wristwatch. Then, when the dial read zero, he looked up again. Fifteen additional seconds elapsed, enough time for him to consider the remote possibility that the bomb was somehow defective. Finally, there was a flash on the horizon—the blinding white flash of the high explosive, followed by the orange-yellow of the secondary explosions and fire.
The sound was like the rumble of distant thunder. Afterward, there was only the sea beating against the side of the Zodiac, and the wind. With the press of a button, he fired the outboard and watched as the Aurora started her journey to the bottom. Then he turned the Zodiac to the west and opened the throttle.
3 (#ulink_95b842e5-1214-52f5-96ec-a958d9fc4ca2)
THE CARIBBEAN–LONDON (#ulink_95b842e5-1214-52f5-96ec-a958d9fc4ca2)
THE FIRST INDICATION OF TROUBLE came when Pegasus Global Charters of Nassau reported that a routine message to one of its vessels, the 154-foot luxury motor yacht Aurora, had received no reply. The Pegasus operations center immediately requested assistance from all commercial ships and pleasure craft in the vicinity of the Leeward Islands, and within minutes the crew of a Liberian-registered oil tanker reported that they had seen an unusual flash of light in the area at approximately 3:45 that morning. Shortly thereafter the crew of a container ship spotted one of the Aurora’s dinghies floating empty and adrift approximately one hundred miles south-southeast of Gustavia. Simultaneously, a private sailing vessel encountered life preservers and other floating debris a few miles to the west. Fearing the worst, Pegasus management phoned the British High Commission in Kingston and informed the honorary consul that the Aurora was missing and presumed lost. Management then sent along a copy of the passenger manifest, which included the given name of the former princess. “Tell me it isn’t her,” the honorary consul said incredulously, but Pegasus management confirmed that the passenger was indeed the former wife of the future king. The consul immediately rang his superiors at the Foreign Office in London, and the superiors determined the situation was of sufficient gravity to wake Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster, at which point the crisis truly began.
The prime minister broke the news to the future king by telephone at half past one, but waited until nine to inform the British people and the world. Standing outside the black door of 10 Downing Street, his face grim, he recounted the facts as they were known at that time. The former wife of the future king had traveled to the Caribbean in the company of Simon Hastings-Clarke and two other longtime friends. On the holiday island of Saint Barthélemy, the party had boarded the luxury motor yacht Aurora for a planned one-week cruise. All contact with the vessel had been lost; surface debris had been discovered. “We hope and pray the princess will be found alive,” the prime minister said solemnly. “But we must prepare ourselves for the very worst.”
The first day of the search produced no remains or survivors. Nor did the second day or the third. After conferring with the Queen, Prime Minister Lancaster announced that his government was operating under the assumption that the beloved princess was dead. In the Caribbean, the search teams focused their efforts on finding wreckage rather than the bodies. It would not be a long search. In fact, just forty-eight hours later, an unmanned submersible operated by the French navy discovered the Aurora lying beneath two thousand feet of seawater. One expert who viewed the video images said it was clear the vessel had suffered some type of cataclysmic failure, almost certainly an explosion. “The question is,” he said, “was it an accident, or was it intentional?”
A majority of the country—reliable polling said it was so—refused to believe she was actually gone. They hung their hopes on the fact that only one of the Aurora’s two Zodiac dinghies had been found. Surely, they argued, she was adrift on the open seas or had washed ashore on a deserted island. One disreputable Web site went so far as to report that she had been spotted on Montserrat. Another said she was living quietly by the sea in Dorset. Conspiracy theorists of every stripe concocted lurid tales of a plot to kill the princess that was conceived by the Queen’s Privy Council and carried out by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6. Pressure mounted on its chief, Graham Seymour, to issue a full-throated denial of the allegations, but he steadfastly refused. “These aren’t allegations,” he told the foreign secretary during a tense meeting at the service’s vast riverfront headquarters. “These are fairy tales spun by people with mental disorders, and I won’t dignify them with a response.”
Privately, however, Seymour had already reached the conclusion that the explosion aboard the Aurora was not an accident. So, too, had his counterpart at the DGSE, the highly capable French intelligence service. A French analysis of the wreckage video had determined that the Aurora was blown apart by a bomb detonated belowdecks. But who had smuggled the device aboard the vessel? And who had primed the detonator? The DGSE’s prime suspect was the man who had been hired to replace the Aurora’s missing head chef on the evening before the yacht left port. The French forwarded to MI6 a grainy video of his arrival at Gustavia’s airport, along with a few poor-quality still photos captured by private storefront security cameras. They showed a man who did not care to have his picture taken. “He doesn’t strike me as the sort of chap who would go down with the ship,” Seymour told a gathering of his senior staff. “He’s out there somewhere. Find out who he really is and where he’s hiding out, preferably before the Frogs.”
He was a whisper in a half-lit chapel, a loose thread at the hem of a discarded garment. They ran the photographs through the computers. And when the computers failed to find a match, they searched for him the old-fashioned way, with shoe leather and envelopes filled with money—American money, of course, for in the nether regions of the espionage world, dollars remained the reserve currency. MI6’s man in Caracas could find no trace of him. Nor could he find any hint of an Anglo-Irish mother with a poetic heart, or of a Spanish-businessman father. The address on his passport turned out to be a derelict lot in a Caracas slum; his last known phone number was long deceased. A paid asset inside the Venezuelan secret police said he’d heard a rumor about a link to Castro, but a source close to Cuban intelligence murmured something about the Colombian cartels. “Maybe once,” said an incorruptible policeman in Bogotá, “but he parted company with the drug lords a long time ago. The last thing I heard, he was living in Panama with one of Noriega’s former mistresses. He had several million stashed in a dirty Panamanian bank and a beach condo on the Playa Farallón.” The former mistress denied all knowledge of him, and the manager of the bank in question, after accepting a bribe of ten thousand dollars, could find no record of any accounts bearing his name. As for the beach condo in Farallón, a neighbor could recall little of his appearance, only his voice. “He spoke with a peculiar accent,” he said. “It sounded as though he was from Australia. Or was it South Africa?”
Graham Seymour monitored the search for the elusive suspect from the comfort of his office, the finest office in all spydom, with its English garden of an atrium, its enormous mahogany desk used by all the chiefs who had come before him, its towering windows overlooking the river Thames, and its stately old grandfather clock constructed by none other than Sir Mansfield Smith Cumming, the first “C” of the British Secret Service. The splendor of his surroundings made Seymour restless. In his distant past, he had been a field man of some repute—not for MI6 but for MI5, Britain’s less glamorous internal security service, where he had served with distinction before making the short journey from Thames House to Vauxhall Cross. There were some in MI6 who resented the appointment of an outsider, but most saw “the crossing,” as it became known in the trade, as a sort of homecoming. Seymour’s father had been a legendary MI6 officer, a deceiver of the Nazis, a shaper of events in the Middle East. And now his son, in the prime of life, sat behind the desk before which Seymour the Elder had stood, cap in hand.
With power, however, there often comes a feeling of helplessness, and Seymour, the espiocrat, the boardroom spy, soon fell victim to it. As the search ground futilely on, and as pressure from Downing Street and the palace mounted, his mood grew brittle. He kept a photo of the target on his desk, next to the Victorian inkwell and the Parker fountain pen he used to mark his documents with his personal cipher. Something about the face was familiar. Seymour suspected that somewhere—on another battlefield, in another land—their paths had crossed. It didn’t matter that the service databases said it wasn’t so. Seymour trusted his own memory over the memory of any government computer.
And so, as the field hands chased down false leads and dug dry wells, Seymour conducted a search of his own from his gilded cage atop Vauxhall Cross. He began by scouring his prodigious memory, and when it failed him, he requested access to a stack of his old MI5 case files and searched those, too. Again he found no trace of his quarry. Finally, on the morning of the tenth day, the console telephone on Seymour’s desk purred sedately. The distinctive ringtone told him the caller was Uzi Navot, the chief of Israel’s vaunted secret intelligence service. Seymour hesitated, then cautiously lifted the receiver to his ear. As usual, the Israeli spymaster didn’t bother with an exchange of pleasantries.
“I think we might have found the man you’re looking for.”
“Who is he?”
“An old friend.”
“Of yours or ours?”
“Yours,” said the Israeli. “We don’t have any friends.”
“Can you tell me his name?”
“Not on the phone.”
“How soon can you be in London?”
The line went dead.
4 (#ulink_200fb4fa-4389-5530-a1bc-eb270d6bd805)
VAUXHALL CROSS, LONDON (#ulink_200fb4fa-4389-5530-a1bc-eb270d6bd805)
UZI NAVOT ARRIVED AT VAUXHALL CROSS shortly before eleven that evening and was fired into the executive suite in a pneumatic tube of an elevator. He wore a gray suit that fit him tightly through his massive shoulders, a white shirt that lay open against his thick neck, and rimless spectacles that pinched the bridge of his pugilist’s nose. At first glance, few assumed Navot to be an Israeli or even a Jew, a trait that had served him well during his career. Once upon a time he had been a katsa, the term used by his service to describe undercover field operatives. Armed with an array of languages and a pile of false passports, Navot had penetrated terror networks and recruited a chain of spies and informants scattered around the world. In London he had been known as Clyde Bridges, the European marketing director for an obscure business software firm. He had run several successful operations on British soil at a time when it was Seymour’s responsibility to prevent such activity. Seymour held no grudge, for such was the nature of relationships between spies: adversaries one day, allies the next.
A frequent visitor to Vauxhall Cross, Navot did not remark on the beauty of Seymour’s grand office. Nor did he engage in the usual round of professional gossip that preceded most encounters between inhabitants of the secret world. Seymour knew the reason for the Israeli’s taciturn mood. Navot’s first term as chief was nearing its end, and his prime minister had asked him to step aside for another man, a legendary officer with whom Seymour had worked on numerous occasions. There was talk that the legend had struck a deal to retain Navot’s services. It was unorthodox, allowing one’s predecessor to remain on the premises, but the legend rarely concerned himself with adherence to orthodoxy. His willingness to take chances was his greatest strength—and sometimes, thought Seymour, his undoing.
Dangling from Navot’s powerful right hand was a stainless-steel attaché case with combination locks. From it he removed a slender file folder, which he placed on the mahogany desk. Inside was a document, one page in length; the Israelis prided themselves on the brevity of their cables. Seymour read the subject line. Then he glanced at the photograph lying next to his inkwell and swore softly. On the opposite side of the imposing desk, Uzi Navot permitted himself a brief smile. It wasn’t often that one succeeded in telling the director-general of MI6 something he didn’t already know.
“Who’s the source of the information?” asked Seymour.
“It’s possible he was an Iranian,” replied Navot vaguely.
“Does MI6 have regular access to his product?”
“No,” answered Navot. “He’s ours exclusively.”
MI6, the CIA, and Israeli intelligence had worked closely for more than a decade to delay the Iranian march toward a nuclear weapon. The three services had operated jointly against the Iranian nuclear supply chain and shared vast amounts of technical data and intelligence. It was agreed that the Israelis had the best human sources in Tehran, and, much to the annoyance of the Americans and the British, they protected them jealously. Judging from the wording of the report, Seymour suspected that Navot’s spy worked for VEVAK, the Iranian intelligence service. VEVAK sources were notoriously difficult to handle. Sometimes the information they traded for Western cash was genuine. And sometimes it was in the service of taqiyya, the Persian practice of displaying one intention while harboring another.
“Do you believe him?” asked Seymour.
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.” Navot paused, then added, “And something tells me you believe him, too.”
When Seymour offered no reply, Navot drew a second document from his attaché case and laid it on the desktop next to the first. “It’s a copy of a report we sent to MI6 three years ago,” he explained. “We knew about his connection to the Iranians back then. We also knew he was working with Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and anyone else who would have him.” Navot added, “Your friend isn’t terribly discriminating about the company he keeps.”
“It was before my time,” Seymour intoned.
“But now it’s your problem.” Navot pointed toward a passage near the end of the document. “As you can see, we proposed an operation to take him out of circulation. We even volunteered to do the job. And how do you suppose your predecessor responded to our generous offer?”
“Obviously, he turned it down.”
“With extreme prejudice. In fact, he told us in no uncertain terms that we weren’t to lay a finger on him. He was afraid it would open a Pandora’s box.” Navot shook his head slowly. “And now here we are.”
The room was silent except for the ticking of C’s old grandfather clock. Finally, Navot asked quietly, “Where were you that day, Graham?”
“What day?”
“The fifteenth of August, nineteen ninety-eight.”
“The day of the bombing?”
Navot nodded.
“You know damn well where I was,” Seymour answered. “I was at Five.”
“You were the head of counterterrorism.”
“Yes.”
“Which meant it was your responsibility.”
Seymour said nothing.
“What happened, Graham? How did he get through?”
“Mistakes were made. Bad mistakes. Bad enough to ruin careers, even today.” Seymour gathered up the two documents and returned them to Navot. “Did your Iranian source tell you why he did it?”
“It’s possible he’s returned to the old fight. It’s also possible he was acting at the behest of others. Either way, he needs to be dealt with, sooner rather than later.”
Seymour made no response.
“Our offer still stands, Graham.”
“What offer is that?”
“We’ll take care of him,” Navot answered. “And then we’ll bury him in a hole so deep that none of the old problems will ever make it to the surface.”
Seymour lapsed into a contemplative silence. “There’s only one person I would trust with a job like this,” he said at last.
“That might be difficult.”
“The pregnancy?”
Navot nodded.
“When is she due?”
“I’m afraid that’s classified.”
Seymour managed a brief smile. “Do you suppose he might be persuaded to take the assignment?”
“Anything’s possible,” replied Navot noncommittally. “I’d be happy to make the approach on your behalf.”
“No,” said Seymour. “I’ll do it.”
“There is one other problem,” said Navot after a moment.
“Only one?”
“He doesn’t know much about that part of the world.”
“I know someone who can serve as his guide.”
“He won’t work with someone he doesn’t know.”
“Actually, they’re very well acquainted.”
“Is he MI6?”
“No,” replied Seymour. “Not yet.”
5 (#ulink_bb86e937-fec7-5970-b7cb-ab0c0bae1d81)
FIUMICINO AIRPORT, ROME (#ulink_bb86e937-fec7-5970-b7cb-ab0c0bae1d81)
WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE MY flight is delayed?” asked Chiara.
“It could be a mechanical problem,” replied Gabriel.
“It could be,” she repeated without conviction.
They were seated in a quiet corner of a first-class departure lounge. It didn’t matter the city, thought Gabriel, they were all the same. Unread newspapers, tepid bottles of suspect pinot grigio, CNN International playing silently on a large flat-panel television. By his own calculation, Gabriel had spent one-third of his career in places like this. Unlike his wife, he was extraordinarily good at waiting.
“Go ask that pretty girl at the information desk why my flight hasn’t been called,” she said.
“I don’t want to talk to the pretty girl at the information desk.”
“Why not?”
“Because she doesn’t know anything, and she’ll simply tell me something she thinks I want to hear.”
“Why must you always be so fatalistic?”
“It prevents me from being disappointed later.”
Chiara smiled and closed her eyes; Gabriel looked at the television. A British reporter in a helmet and flak jacket was talking about the latest airstrike on Gaza. Gabriel wondered why CNN had become so enamored with British reporters. He supposed it was the accent. The news always sounded more authoritative when delivered with a British accent, even if not a word of it was true.
“What’s he saying?” asked Chiara.
“Do you really want to know?”
“It’ll help pass the time.”
Gabriel squinted to read the closed captioning. “He says an Israeli warplane attacked a school where several hundred Palestinians were sheltering from the fighting. He says at least fifteen people were killed and several dozen more seriously wounded.”
“How many were women and children?”
“All of them, apparently.”
“Was the school the real target of the air raid?”
Gabriel typed a brief message into his BlackBerry and fired it securely to King Saul Boulevard, the headquarters of Israel’s foreign intelligence service. It had a long and deliberately misleading name that had very little to do with the true nature of its work. Employees referred to it as the Office and nothing else.
“The real target,” he said, his eyes on the BlackBerry, “was a house across the street.”
“Who lives in the house?”
“Muhammad Sarkis.”
“The Muhammad Sarkis?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Is Muhammad still among the living?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What about the school?”
“It wasn’t hit. The only casualties were Sarkis and members of his family.”
“Maybe someone should tell that reporter the truth.”
“What good would it do?”
“More fatalism,” said Chiara.
“No disappointment.”
“Please find out why my flight is delayed.”
Gabriel typed another message into his BlackBerry. A moment later came the response.
“One of the Hamas rockets landed close to Ben-Gurion.”
“How close?” asked Chiara.
“Too close for comfort.”
“Do you think the pretty girl at the information desk knows my destination is under rocket fire?”
Gabriel was silent.
“Are you sure you want to go through with it?” asked Chiara.
“With what?”
“Don’t make me say it aloud.”
“Are you asking whether I still want to be the chief at a time like this?”
She nodded.
“At a time like this,” he said, watching the images of combat and explosions flickering on the screen, “I wish I could go to Gaza and fight alongside our boys.”
“I thought you hated the army.”
“I did.”
She tilted her head toward him and opened her eyes. They were the color of caramel and flecked with gold. Time had left no marks on her beautiful face. Were it not for her swollen abdomen and the band of gold on her finger, she might have been the same young girl he had first encountered a lifetime ago, in the ancient ghetto of Venice.
“Fitting, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“That the children of Gabriel Allon should be born in a time of war.”
“With a bit of luck, the war will be over by the time they’re born.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” Chiara glanced at the departure board. The status box for Flight 386 to Tel Aviv read DELAYED. “If my plane doesn’t leave soon, they’re going to be born here in Italy.”
“Not a chance.”
“What would be so wrong with that?”
“We had a plan. And we’re sticking to the plan.”
“Actually,” she said archly, “the plan was for us to return to Israel together.”
“True,” said Gabriel, smiling. “But events intervened.”
“They usually do.”
Seventy-two hours earlier, in an ordinary parish church near Lake Como, Gabriel and Chiara had discovered one of the world’s most famous stolen paintings: Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence. The badly damaged canvas was now at the Vatican, where it was awaiting restoration. It was Gabriel’s intention to conduct the early stages himself. Such was his unique combination of talents. He was an art restorer, he was a master spy and assassin, a legend who had overseen some of the greatest operations in the history of Israeli intelligence. Soon he would be a father again, and then he would be the chief. They didn’t write stories about chiefs, he thought. They wrote stories about the men whom chiefs sent into the field to do their dirty work.
“I don’t know why you’re being so stubborn about that painting,” Chiara said.
“I found it, I want to restore it.”
“Actually, we found it. But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s no possible way you can finish it before the children are born.”
“It doesn’t matter whether I can finish it or not. I just want to—”
“Leave your mark on it?”
He nodded slowly. “It might be the last painting I ever get to restore. Besides, I owe it to him.”
“Who?”
He didn’t answer; he was reading the closed captioning on the television.
“What’s he talking about now?” Chiara asked.
“The princess.”
“What about her?”
“It seems the explosion that sank the boat was an accident.”
“Do you believe it?”
“No.”
“So why would they say something like that?”
“I suppose they want to give themselves time and space.”
“For what?”
“To find the man they’re looking for.”
Chiara closed her eyes and leaned her head against his shoulder. Her dark hair, with its shimmering auburn and chestnut highlights, smelled richly of vanilla. Gabriel kissed her hair softly and inhaled its scent. Suddenly, he didn’t want her to get on the airplane alone.
“What does the departure board say about my flight?” she asked.
“Delayed.”
“Can’t you do something to speed things up?”
“You overestimate my powers.”
“False modesty doesn’t suit you, darling.”
Gabriel typed another brief message into his BlackBerry and sent it to King Saul Boulevard. A moment later the device vibrated softly with the reply.
“Well?” asked Chiara.
“Watch the board.”
Chiara opened her eyes. The status box for El Al Flight 386 still read DELAYED. Thirty seconds later it changed to BOARDING.
“Too bad you can’t stop the war so easily,” Chiara said.
“Only Hamas can stop the war.”
She gathered up her carry-on bag and a stack of glossy magazines and rose carefully to her feet. “Be a good boy,” she said. “And if someone asks you for a favor, remember those three lovely words.”
“Find someone else.”
Chiara smiled. Then she kissed Gabriel with surprising urgency.
“Come home, Gabriel.”
“Soon.”
“No,” she said. “Come home now.”
“You’d better hurry, Chiara. Otherwise, you’ll miss your flight.”
She kissed him one last time. Then she turned away without another word and boarded the plane.
Gabriel waited until Chiara’s flight was safely airborne before leaving the terminal and making his way to Fiumicino’s chaotic parking garage. His anonymous German sedan was at the far end of the third deck, the front end facing out, lest he had reason to flee the garage in a hurry. As always, he searched the undercarriage for evidence of a concealed explosive before sliding behind the wheel and starting the engine. An Italian pop song blasted from the radio, one of those silly tunes Chiara was always singing to herself when she thought no one else was listening. Gabriel switched to the BBC, but it was filled with news about the war so he lowered the volume. There would be time enough for war later, he thought. For the next few weeks there would only be the Caravaggio.
He crossed the Tiber over the Ponte Cavour and made his way to the Via Gregoriana. The old Office safe flat was at the far end of the street, near the top of the Spanish Steps. He squeezed the sedan into an empty spot along the curb and retrieved his Beretta 9mm pistol from the glove box before climbing out. The chill night air smelled of frying garlic and faintly of wet leaves, the smell of Rome in autumn. Something about it always made Gabriel think of death.
He walked past the entrance of his building, past the awnings of the Hassler Villa Medici Hotel, to the Church of the Trinità dei Monti. A moment later, after determining he was not being followed, he returned to his apartment building. A single energy-efficient bulb burned weakly in the foyer; he moved through its sphere of light and climbed the darkened staircase. As he stepped onto the third-floor landing, he froze. The door of the flat was ajar, and from within came the sound of drawers opening and closing. Calmly, he drew the Beretta from the small of his back and used the barrel to slowly push open the door. At first, he could see no sign of the intruder. Then the door yielded another inch and he glimpsed Graham Seymour standing at the kitchen counter, an unopened bottle of Gavi in one hand and a corkscrew in the other. Gabriel slipped the gun into his coat pocket and went inside. And in his head he was thinking of three lovely words.
Find someone else …
6 (#ulink_b9be07f1-3590-54ea-93ca-6cee9e41e808)
VIA GREGORIANA, ROME (#ulink_b9be07f1-3590-54ea-93ca-6cee9e41e808)
PERHAPS YOU’D BETTER SEE TO this, Gabriel. Otherwise, someone’s liable to get hurt.”
Seymour surrendered the bottle of wine and the corkscrew and leaned against the kitchen counter. He wore gray flannel trousers, a herringbone jacket, and a blue dress shirt with French cuffs. The absence of personal aides or a security detail suggested he had traveled to Rome using a pseudonymous passport. It was a bad sign. The chief of MI6 traveled clandestinely only when he had a serious problem.
“How did you get in here?” asked Gabriel.
Seymour fished a key from the pocket of his trousers. Attached was the simple black medallion so beloved by Housekeeping, the Office division that procured and managed safe properties.
“Where did you get that?”
“Uzi gave it to me yesterday in London.”
“And the code for the alarm? I suppose he gave you that, too.”
Seymour recited the eight-digit number.
“That’s a violation of Office protocol.”
“There were extenuating circumstances. Besides,” added Seymour, “after all the operations we’ve done together, I’m practically a member of the family.”
“Even family members knock before entering a room.”
“You’re one to talk.”
Gabriel removed the cork from the bottle, poured out two glasses, and handed one to Seymour. The Englishman raised his glass a fraction of an inch and said, “To fatherhood.”
“It’s bad luck to drink to children who haven’t been born yet, Graham.”
“Then what shall we drink to?”
When Gabriel offered no answer, Seymour went into the sitting room. From its picture window it was possible to see the bell tower of the church and the top of the Spanish Steps. He stood there for a moment gazing out across the rooftops as though he were admiring the rolling hills of his country estate from the terrace of his manor house. With his pewter-colored locks and sturdy jaw, Graham Seymour was the archetypal British civil servant, a man who’d been born, bred, and educated to lead. He was handsome, but not too; he was tall, but not remarkably so. He made others feel inferior, especially Americans.
“You know,” he said finally, “you really should find somewhere else to stay when you’re in Rome. The entire world knows about this safe flat, which means it isn’t a safe flat at all.”
“I like the view.”
“I can see why.”
Seymour returned his gaze to the darkened rooftops. Gabriel sensed there was something troubling him. He would get around to it eventually. He always did.
“I hear your wife left town today,” he said at last.
“What other privileged information did the chief of my service share with you?”
“He mentioned something about a painting.”
“It’s not just any painting, Graham. It’s the—”
“Caravaggio,” said Seymour, finishing Gabriel’s sentence for him. Then he smiled and added, “You do have a knack for finding things, don’t you?”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“I suppose it was.”
Seymour drank. Gabriel asked why Uzi Navot had come to London.
“He had a piece of intelligence he wanted me to see. I have to admit,” Seymour added, “he seemed in good spirits for a man in his position.”
“What position is that?”
“Everyone in the business knows Uzi is on his way out,” answered Seymour. “And he’s leaving behind a terrible mess. The entire Middle East is in flames, and it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”
“Uzi wasn’t the one who made the mess.”
“No,” agreed Seymour, “the Americans did that. The president and his advisers were too quick to part ways with the Arab strongmen. Now the president’s confronted with a world gone mad, and he doesn’t have a clue as to what to do about it.”
“And if you were advising the president, Graham?”
“I’d tell him to resurrect the strongmen. It worked before, it can work again.”
“All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men.”
“Your point?”
“The old order is broken, and it can’t be put back together. Besides,” added Gabriel, “the old order is what brought us Bin Laden and the jihadists in the first place.”
“And when the jihadists try to evict the Jewish state from the House of Islam?”
“They are trying, Graham. And in case you haven’t noticed, they don’t have much use for the United Kingdom, either. Like it or not, we’re in this together.”
Gabriel’s BlackBerry vibrated. He looked at the screen and frowned.
“What is it?” asked Seymour.
“Another cease-fire.”
“How long will this one last?”
“I suppose until Hamas decides to break it.” Gabriel placed the BlackBerry on the coffee table and regarded Seymour curiously. “You were about to tell me what you’re doing in my apartment.”
“I have a problem.”
“What’s his name?”
“Quinn,” answered Seymour. “Eamon Quinn.”
Gabriel ran the name through the database of his memory but found no match. “Irish?” he asked.
Seymour nodded.
“Republican?”
“Of the worst kind.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“A long time ago, I made a mistake and people died.”
“And Quinn was responsible?”
“Quinn lit the fuse, but ultimately I was responsible. That’s the wonderful thing about our business. Our mistakes always come back to haunt us, and eventually all debts come due.” Seymour raised his glass toward Gabriel. “Can we drink to that?”
7 (#ulink_2d81aa12-fb0a-5363-a72f-5e019ea95110)
VIA GREGORIANA, ROME (#ulink_2d81aa12-fb0a-5363-a72f-5e019ea95110)
THE SKIES HAD BEEN THREATENING all afternoon. Finally, at half past ten, a torrential downpour briefly turned the Via Gregoriana into a Venetian canal. Graham Seymour stood at the window watching fat gobbets of rain hammering against the terrace, but in his thoughts it was the hopeful summer of 1998. The Soviet Union was a memory. The economies of Europe and America were roaring. The jihadists of al-Qaeda were the stuff of white papers and terminally boring seminars about future threats. “We fooled ourselves into thinking we had reached the end of history,” he was saying. “There were some in Parliament who actually proposed disbanding the Security Service and MI6 and burning us all at the stake.” He glanced over his shoulder. “They were days of wine and roses. They were days of delusion.”
“Not for me, Graham. I was out of the business at the time.”
“I remember.” Seymour turned away from Gabriel and watched the rain beating against the glass. “You were living in Cornwall then, weren’t you? In that little cottage on the Helford River. Your first wife was at the psychiatric hospital in Stafford, and you were supporting her by cleaning paintings for Julian Isherwood. And there was that boy who lived in the cottage next door. His name escapes me.”
“Peel,” said Gabriel. “His name was Timothy Peel.”
“Ah, yes, young Master Peel. We could never figure out why you were spending so much time with him. And then we realized he was exactly the same age as the son you lost to the bomb in Vienna.”
“I thought we were talking about you, Graham.”
“We are,” replied Seymour.
He then reminded Gabriel, needlessly, that in the summer of 1998 he was the chief of counterterrorism at MI5. As such, he was responsible for protecting the British homeland from the terrorists of the Irish Republican Army. And yet even in Ulster, scene of a centuries-old conflict between Protestants and Catholics, there were signs of hope. The voters of Northern Ireland had ratified the Good Friday peace accords, and the Provisional IRA was adhering to the terms of the cease-fire. Only the Real IRA, a small band of hard-line dissidents, carried on the armed struggle. Its leader was Michael McKevitt, the former quartermaster general of the IRA. His common-law wife, Bernadette Sands-McKevitt, ran the political wing: the 32 County Sovereignty Movement. She was the sister of Bobby Sands, the Provisional IRA member who starved himself to death in the Maze prison in 1981.
“And then,” said Seymour, “there was Eamon Quinn. Quinn planned the operations. Quinn built the bombs. Unfortunately, he was good. Very good.”
A heavy thunderclap shook the building. Seymour gave an involuntary flinch before continuing.
“Quinn had a certain genius for building highly effective bombs and delivering them to their targets. But what he didn’t know,” Seymour added, “was that I had an agent watching over his shoulder.”
“How long was he there?”
“My agent was a woman,” answered Seymour. “And she was there from the beginning.”
Managing the agent and her intelligence, Seymour continued, proved to be a delicate balancing act. Because the agent was highly placed within the organization, she often had advance knowledge of attacks, including the target, the time, and the size of the bomb.
“What were we to do?” asked Seymour. “Disrupt the attacks and put the agent at risk? Or allow the attacks to go forward and try to make sure no one gets killed in the process?”
“The latter,” replied Gabriel.
“Spoken like a true spy.”
“We’re not policemen, Graham.”
“Thank God for that.”
For the most part, said Seymour, the strategy worked. Several large car bombs were defused, and several others exploded with minimal casualties, though one virtually leveled the High Street of Portadown, a loyalist stronghold, in February 1998. Then, six months later, MI5’s spy reported the group was plotting a major attack. Something big, she warned. Something that would blow the Good Friday peace process to bits.
“What were we supposed to do?” asked Seymour.
Outside, the sky exploded with lightning. Seymour emptied his glass and told Gabriel the rest of it.
On the evening of August 13, 1998, a maroon Vauxhall Cavalier, registration number 91 DL 2554, vanished from a housing estate in Carrickmacross, in the Republic of Ireland. It was driven to an isolated farm along the border and fitted with a set of false Northern Ireland plates. Then Quinn fitted it with the bomb: five hundred pounds of fertilizer, a machine-tooled booster rod filled with high explosive, a detonator, a power source hidden in a plastic food container, an arming switch in the glove box. On the morning of Sunday, August 15, he drove the car across the border to Omagh and parked it outside the S.D. Kells department store on Lower Market Street.
“Obviously,” said Seymour, “Quinn didn’t deliver the bomb alone. There was another man in the Vauxhall, two more in a scout car, and another man who drove the getaway car. They communicated by cellular phone. And we were listening to every word.”
“The Security Service?”
“No,” replied Seymour. “Our ability to monitor phone calls didn’t extend beyond the borders of the United Kingdom. The Omagh plot originated in the Irish Republic, so we had to rely on GCHQ to do the eavesdropping for us.”
The Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, was Britain’s version of the NSA. At 2:20 p.m. it intercepted a call from a man who sounded like Eamon Quinn. He spoke six words: “The bricks are in the wall.” MI5 knew from past experience that the phrase meant the bomb was in place. Twelve minutes later Ulster Television received an anonymous telephone warning: “There’s a bomb, courthouse, Omagh, main street, five hundred pounds, explosion in thirty minutes.” The Royal Ulster Constabulary began evacuating the streets around Omagh’s courthouse and frantically looking for the bomb. What they didn’t realize was that they were looking in the wrong place.
“The telephone warning was incorrect,” said Gabriel.
Seymour nodded slowly. “The Vauxhall wasn’t anywhere near the courthouse. It was several hundred yards farther down Lower Market Street. When the RUC began the evacuation, they unwittingly drove people toward the bomb rather than away from it.” Seymour paused, then added, “But that’s exactly what Quinn wanted. He wanted people to die, so he deliberately parked the car in the wrong place. He double-crossed his own organization.”
At ten minutes past three the bomb detonated. Twenty-nine people were killed, another two hundred were wounded. It was the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of the conflict. So powerful was the revulsion that the Real IRA felt compelled to issue an apology. Somehow, the peace process held. After thirty years of blood and bombs, the people of Northern Ireland had finally had enough.
“And then the press and the families of the victims started to ask uncomfortable questions,” said Seymour. “How did the Real IRA manage to plant a bomb in the middle of Omagh without the knowledge of the police and the security services? And why were there no arrests?”
“What did you do?”
“We did what we always do. We closed ranks, burned our files, and waited for the storm to pass.”
Seymour rose, carried his glass into the kitchen, and removed the bottle of Gavi from the refrigerator. “Do you have anything stronger than this?”
“Like what?”
“Something distilled.”
“I’d rather drink acetone than distilled spirits.”
“Acetone with a twist might do the trick about now.” Seymour dumped an inch of wine into his glass and placed the bottle on the counter.
“What happened to Quinn after Omagh?”
“Quinn went into private practice. Quinn went international.”
“What kind of work did he do?”
“The usual,” replied Seymour. “Security work for the thugs and potentates, bomb-making clinics for the revolutionaries and the religiously deranged. We caught a glimpse of him every now and again, but for the most part he flew beneath our radar. Then the chief of Iranian intelligence invited him to Tehran, at which point King Saul Boulevard entered the picture.”
Seymour popped the latches on his briefcase, removed a single sheet of paper, and placed it on the coffee table. Gabriel looked at the document and frowned.
“Another violation of Office protocol.”
“What’s that?”
“Carrying a classified Office cable in an insecure briefcase.”
Gabriel picked up the document and began to read. It stated that Eamon Quinn, former member of the Real IRA, mastermind of the Omagh terrorist outrage, had been retained by Iranian intelligence to develop highly lethal roadside bombs to be used against British and American forces in Iraq. The same Eamon Quinn had performed a similar service for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In addition, he had traveled to Yemen, where he had helped al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula construct a small liquid bomb that could be slipped onto an American jetliner. He was, the report said in its concluding paragraph, one of the most dangerous men in the world and needed to be eliminated immediately.
“You should have taken Uzi up on his offer.”
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” replied Seymour. “But I wouldn’t be so glib. After all, Uzi would have probably given the job to you.”
Gabriel methodically tore the document to tiny shreds.
“That’s not good enough,” said Seymour.
“I’ll burn it later.”
“Do me a favor, and burn Eamon Quinn while you’re at it.”
Gabriel was silent for a moment. “My days in the field are over,” he said finally. “I’m a deskman now, Graham, just like you. Besides, Northern Ireland was never my neck of the woods.”
“Then I suppose we’ll have to find you a partner. Someone who knows the turf. Someone who can pass for a local if need be. Someone who actually knows Eamon Quinn personally.” Seymour paused, then added, “Do you happen to know anyone who fits that description?”
“No,” said Gabriel pointedly.
“I do,” replied Seymour. “But there’s one small problem.”
“What’s that?”
Seymour smiled and said, “He’s dead.”
8 (#ulink_ec0067c5-5ff4-5ef3-8cce-7c00ea4940f6)
VIA GREGORIANA, ROME (#ulink_ec0067c5-5ff4-5ef3-8cce-7c00ea4940f6)
OR IS HE?”
Seymour retrieved two photographs from his briefcase and placed one on the coffee table. It showed a man of medium height and build walking through passport control at Heathrow Airport.
“Recognize him?” asked Seymour.
Gabriel said nothing.
“It’s you, of course.” Seymour pointed to the time code at the bottom of the image. “It was taken last winter during the Madeline Hart affair. You slipped into the United Kingdom unannounced to do a little digging.”
“I was there, Graham. I remember it well.”
“Then you’ll also recall that you began your search for Madeline Hart on the island of Corsica, a logical starting place because that’s where she disappeared. Shortly after your arrival, you went to see a man named Anton Orsati. Don Orsati runs the island’s most powerful organized crime family, a family that specializes in murder for hire. He gave you a valuable piece of information regarding her kidnappers. He also allowed you to borrow his best assassin.” Seymour smiled. “Does any of this ring a bell?”
“Obviously, you were watching me.”
“From a discreet distance. After all, you were searching for the mistress of the British prime minister at my behest.”
“She wasn’t just his mistress, Graham. She was—”
“This Corsican assassin is an interesting fellow,” Seymour interrupted. “In truth, he’s not Corsican at all, though he certainly speaks like one. He’s an Englishman, a former member of the Special Air Service who walked off the battlefield in western Iraq in January 1991 after an incident involving friendly fire. The British military believes he’s dead. Sadly, so do his parents. But then, you already knew that.”
Seymour placed the second photograph on the coffee table. Like the first, it showed a man walking through Heathrow Airport. He was several inches taller than Gabriel, with short blond hair, skin the color of saddle leather, and square, powerful shoulders.
“It was taken on the same day as the first photo, a few minutes later. Your friend entered the country on a false French passport, one of several he has in his possession. On that particular day he was Adrien Leblanc. His real name is—”
“You’ve made your point, Graham.”
Seymour gathered up the photographs and offered them to Gabriel.
“What am I supposed to do with these?”
“Keep them as a memento of your friendship.”
Gabriel tore the photographs in half and placed them next to the shreds of the Office memo. “How long have you known?”
“British intelligence heard rumors for years about an Englishman working in Europe as a professional assassin. We were never able to learn his name. And never in our wildest dreams did we imagine he might be a paid asset of the Office.”
“He’s not a paid asset.”
“How would you describe him?”
“An old adversary who’s now a friend.”
“Adversary?”
“A consortium of Swiss bankers once hired him to kill me.”
“Consider yourself fortunate,” said Seymour. “Christopher Keller rarely fails to fulfill the terms of a contract. He’s very good at what he does.”
“He speaks highly of you, too, Graham.”
Seymour sat silently while a siren rose and faded in the street below. “Keller and I were close,” he said finally. “I fought the IRA from the comfort of my desk, and Keller was at the sharp end of my stick. He did the sort of things that were necessary to keep the British homeland safe. And in the end he paid a terrible price for it.”
“What’s his connection to Quinn?”
“I’ll let Keller tell you that part of the story. I’m not sure I can do it justice.”
A gust of wind hurled rain against the windows. The room lights flickered.
“I haven’t agreed to anything yet, Graham.”
“But you will. Otherwise,” Seymour added, “I’m going to drag your friend back to Britain in chains and hand him over to Her Majesty’s Government for prosecution.”
“On what charges?”
“He’s a deserter and a professional killer. I’m sure we’ll think of something.”
Gabriel only smiled. “A man in your position shouldn’t make idle threats.”
“I’m not.”
“Christopher Keller knows far too much about the private life of the British prime minister for HMG to ever put him on trial for desertion or anything else. Besides,” Gabriel added, “I suspect you have other plans for Keller.”
Seymour said nothing. Gabriel asked, “What else have you got in your briefcase?”
“A thick file on the life and times of Eamon Quinn.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“What we should have done years ago. Take him off the market as quickly as possible. And while you’re at it, find out who ordered and financed the operation to murder the princess.”
“Maybe Quinn’s returned to the fight.”
“The fight for a united Ireland?” Seymour shook his head. “That fight is over. If I had to guess, he killed her at the behest of one of his patrons. And we both know the cardinal rule when it comes to assassinations. It’s not important who fires the shot. It’s who pays for the bullet.”
Another gust of wind slammed against the windows. The lights dimmed and then died. The two spies sat in darkness for several minutes, neither man speaking.
“Who said that?” Gabriel asked finally.
“Said what?”
“That business about the bullet.”
“I believe it was Ambler.”
There was silence.
“I have other plans, Graham.”
“I know.”
“My wife is pregnant. Very pregnant.”
“So you’ll have to work quickly.”
“I suppose Uzi’s already approved it.”
“It was his idea.”
“Remind me to give Uzi a lousy assignment the moment after I’m sworn in as chief.”
A flash of lightning illuminated Seymour’s Cheshire cat grin. Then the darkness returned.
“I think I saw some candles in the kitchen when I was looking for a corkscrew.”
“I like the darkness,” said Gabriel. “It clarifies my thinking.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“I’m thinking about what I’m going to say to my wife.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes,” said Gabriel. “I’m wondering how Quinn knew the princess was going to be on that boat.”
9 (#ulink_72da6351-c41e-5fee-a24a-72bfe9f84ce0)
BERLIN–CORSICA (#ulink_72da6351-c41e-5fee-a24a-72bfe9f84ce0)
THE SAVOY HOTEL STOOD AT the unfashionable end of one of Berlin’s most fashionable streets. A red carpet stretched from its entrance; red tables stood beneath red umbrellas along its facade. The previous afternoon Keller had spotted a famous actor drinking coffee there, but now, as he emerged from the hotel’s entrance, the tables were deserted. The clouds were low and leaden and a cold wind was plucking the last leaves from the trees lining the pavements. Berlin’s brief autumn was receding. Soon it would be winter again.
“Taxi, monsieur?”
“No, thank you.”
Keller slipped a five-euro note into the valet’s outstretched hand and set out along the street. He had registered at the hotel under a French alias—management was under the impression he was a freelance journalist who wrote about films—and stayed only a single night. He had spent the previous evening at a modest hotel called the Seifert, and before that he had passed a sleepless night in a grim little pension called the Bella Berlin. All three establishments had one thing in common: they were near the Kempinski Hotel, which was Keller’s destination. He was going there to meet a man, a Libyan, a former close associate of Gaddafi who had fled to France after the revolution with two suitcases filled with cash and jewels. The Libyan had invested $2 million with a pair of French businessmen after receiving assurances of a substantial profit. The French businessmen were already weary of their association with the Libyan. They were worried, too, about his past reputation for violence, for it was said of the Libyan that he used to enjoy pounding spikes through the eyes of the regime’s opponents. The French businessmen had turned to Don Anton Orsati for help, and the don had given the assignment to his most accomplished assassin. Keller had to admit he was looking forward to the fulfillment of the contract. He had never cared for the now-deceased Libyan dictator or the thugs who had kept his regime in power. Gaddafi had allowed terrorists of every stripe to train at his desert camps, including members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He had also supplied the IRA with arms and explosives. Indeed, nearly all the Semtex used in IRA bombs came directly from Libya.
Keller crossed the Kantstrasse and headed down the ramp of an underground parking garage. On the second level, in a part of the garage untouched by security cameras, was a black BMW that had been left for him by a member of the Orsati organization. In the trunk was a Heckler & Koch 9mm pistol with a suppressor; in the glove box was a cardkey that would open the door of any guest room at the Kempinski Hotel. The key had been acquired for the price of five thousand euros from a Gambian who worked in the hotel’s laundry department. The Gambian had assured the man from the Orsati organization that the cardkey would remain operational for another forty-eight hours. After that, the codes would undergo a routine change, and hotel security would issue new passkeys to all essential employees. Keller hoped the Gambian was telling the truth. Otherwise, there would soon be an opening in the Kempinski’s laundry department.
Keller slipped the gun and the cardkey into his briefcase. Then he placed his overnight bag in the trunk of the BMW and headed up the ramp to the street. The Kempinski was a hundred meters farther along the Fasanenstrasse, a big hotel with Vegas-bright lights over the entrance and a Parisian-style café overlooking the Kurfürstendamm. At one of the tables sat the Libyan. He was accompanied by a man of perhaps sixty and a once-beautiful woman with coal-black hair and Cleopatra makeup. The man looked like an old comrade from the court of Gaddafi; the woman looked well cared for and very bored. Keller assumed she belonged to the Libyan’s friend, for the Libyan liked his women blond, professional, and pricey.
Keller entered the hotel, aware of the fact that several surveillance cameras were now watching him. It didn’t matter; he was wearing a dark wig and heavy false spectacles. Five hotel guests, new arrivals, judging by the look of them, were waiting for an elevator. Keller allowed them to board the first available carriage and then rode to the fifth floor alone, his head lowered in such a way that the surveillance camera could not clearly capture the features of his face. When the doors opened, he stepped out of the carriage with the air of a man who was not looking forward to returning to the loneliness of yet another hotel room. A single member of the housekeeping staff gave him a drowsy nod, but otherwise the corridor was empty. The cardkey was now in the breast pocket of his overcoat. He removed it as he approached Room 518 and inserted it into the slot. The green light shone, the electronic lock disengaged. The Gambian would live another day.
The room had been recently serviced. Even so, the stench of the Libyan’s appalling cologne persisted. Keller moved to the window and looked into the street. The Libyan and his two companions were still at their table at the café, though the woman appeared restless. In the time since Keller had seen them last, their plates had been cleared and coffee had been served. Ten minutes, he reckoned. Maybe less.
He turned from the window and calmly surveyed the room. The Kempinski thought it superior, but it was really quite ordinary: a double bed, a writing desk, a television console, a royal-blue armchair. The walls were thick enough to smother all sound from the adjoining rooms, though not thick enough to withstand a normal bullet, even a bullet that had penetrated a human body. As a result, Keller’s HK was loaded with 124-grain hollow-point rounds that would expand on impact. Any round that struck the intended target would remain there. And in the unlikely event Keller somehow missed, the round would lodge harmlessly in the wall with a dull thud.
He returned to the window and saw that the Libyan and his two companions were on their feet. The man of perhaps sixty was shaking the Libyan’s hand; the once-beautiful woman with coal-black hair was gazing longingly at the parade of exclusive shops lining the Ku-Damm. Keller drew the heavy curtains, sat down in the royal-blue armchair, and removed the HK from his briefcase. From the corridor came the squeak of a housekeeper’s trolley. Then all was silent. He glanced at his wristwatch and marked the time. Five minutes, he thought. Maybe less.
A benevolent sun shone brightly upon the island of Corsica as the overnight ferry from Marseilles eased into the port of Ajaccio. Keller filed off the vessel with the other passengers and made his way to the car park, where he had left his battered old Renault station wagon. A powdery dust covered the windows and the hood. Keller thought the dust a bad omen. In all likelihood the sirocco had carried it from North Africa. Instinctively, he touched the small red coral hand hanging around his neck by a strand of leather. The Corsicans believed the talisman had the power to ward off the occhju, the evil eye. Keller believed it, too, though the presence of North African dust on his car the morning after he had killed a Libyan suggested the talisman had failed to protect him. There was an old woman in his village, a signadora, who had the power to draw the evil from his body. Keller was not looking forward to seeing her, for the old woman also had the power to glimpse both the past and the future. She was one of the few people on the island who knew the truth about him. She knew his long litany of sins and misdeeds, and even claimed to know the time and circumstances of his death. It was the one thing she refused to tell him. “It is not my place,” she would whisper to him in her candlelit parlor. “Besides, to know how life ends would only ruin the story.”
Keller climbed behind the wheel of the Renault and set out down the island’s rugged western coastline, the turquoise-blue sea to his right, the high peaks of the interior to his left. To pass the time he listened to the news on the radio. There was nothing about a dead Libyan at a luxury hotel in Berlin. Keller doubted the body had even been discovered yet. He had committed the act in silence and upon leaving the room had hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the latch. Eventually, the Kempinski’s management would take it upon themselves to knock on the door. And upon receiving no response, management would enter the room and find a valued guest with two bullet holes over his heart and a third in the center of his forehead. Management would immediately telephone the police, of course, and a hasty search would commence for the dark-haired, mustachioed man seen entering the room. They would manage to track his movements immediately after the killing, but the trail would go cold in the wooded gloom of the Tiergarten. The police would never establish his identity. Some would suspect him of being a Libyan like his victim, but a few of the wiser veterans would speculate that he was the same high-priced professional who had been killing in Europe for years. And then they would wash their hands of it, for they knew that murders carried out by professional assassins were rarely solved.
Keller followed the coastline to the town of Porto and then turned inland. It was a Sunday; the roads were quiet, and in the hill towns church bells tolled. In the center of the island, near its highest point, was the small village of the Orsatis. It had been there, or so it was said, since the time of the Vandals, when people from the coasts took to the hills for safety. Time seemed to have stopped there. Children played in the streets at all hours because there were no predators. Nor were there any illegal narcotics, for no dealer would risk the wrath of the Orsatis by peddling drugs in their village. Nothing much happened there, and sometimes there was not enough work to be done. But it was clean and beautiful and safe, and the people who lived there seemed content to eat well, drink their wine, and enjoy time with their children and their elders. Keller always missed them when he was away from Corsica for long. He dressed like them, he spoke the Corsican dialect like them, and in the evening, when he played boules with the men in the village square, he gave the same disgusted shake of his head whenever someone spoke of the French or, heaven forbid, the Italians. Once the people of the village had called him “the Englishman.” Now he was merely Christopher. He was one of them.
The historic estate of the Orsati clan lay just beyond the village, in a small valley of olive trees that produced the island’s finest oil. Two armed guards stood watch at the entrance; they touched their Corsican flat caps respectfully as Keller turned through the gate and started up the long drive toward the villa. Laricio pine shaded the forecourt, but in the walled garden bright sunlight shone upon the long table that had been laid for the family’s traditional Sunday lunch. For now, the table was unoccupied. The clan was still at Mass, and the don, who no longer set foot in church, was upstairs in his office. He was seated at a large oaken table, peering into an open leather-bound ledger, when Keller entered. At his elbow was a decorative bottle of Orsati olive oil—olive oil being the legitimate business through which the don laundered the profits of death.
“How was Berlin?” he asked without looking up.
“Cold,” said Keller. “But productive.”
“Any complications?”
“No.”
Orsati smiled. The only thing he disliked more than complications were the French. He closed the ledger and settled his dark eyes on Keller’s face. As usual, Don Orsati was dressed in a crisp white shirt, loose-fitting trousers of pale cotton, and leather sandals that looked as though they had been purchased at the local outdoor market, which was indeed the case. His heavy mustache had been trimmed, and his head of bristly gray-black hair glistened with tonic. The don always took inordinate care with his grooming on Sunday. He no longer believed in God but insisted on keeping the Sabbath sacred. He refrained from foul language on the Lord’s Day, he tried to think good thoughts, and, most important, he forbade his taddunaghiu from fulfilling contracts. Even Keller, who had been raised an Anglican and was therefore considered a heretic, was bound by the don’s edicts. Recently, he had been forced to spend an additional night in Warsaw because Don Orsati would not grant him dispensation to kill the target, a Russian mobster, on the day of rest.
“You’ll stay for lunch,” the don was saying.
“Thank you, Don Orsati,” Keller said formally, “but I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“You? Impose?” The Corsican waved his hand dismissively.
“I’m tired,” said Keller. “It was a rough crossing.”
“You didn’t sleep on the ferry?”
“Evidently,” said Keller, “you haven’t been on a ferry recently.”
It was true. Anton Orsati rarely ventured beyond the well-guarded walls of his estate. The world came to him with its problems, and he made them go away—for a substantial fee, of course. He picked up a thick manila envelope and placed it in front of Keller.
“What’s that?”
“Consider it a Christmas bonus.”
“It’s October.”
The don shrugged. Keller lifted the flap of the envelope and peered inside. It was packed with bundles of hundred-euro notes. He lowered the flap and pushed the envelope toward the center of the table.
“Here on Corsica,” the don said with a frown, “it is impolite to refuse a gift.”
“The gift isn’t necessary.”
“Take it, Christopher. You’ve earned it.”
“You’ve made me rich, Don Orsati, richer than I ever dreamed possible.”
“But?”
Keller sat silently.
“A closed mouth catches neither flies nor food,” said the don, quoting from his seemingly bottomless supply of Corsican proverbs.
“Your point?”
“Speak, Christopher. Tell me what’s bothering you.”
Keller was staring at the money, consciously avoiding the don’s gaze.
“Are you bored with your work?”
“It’s not that.”
“Maybe you should take a break. You could focus your energies on the legitimate side of the business. There’s plenty of money to be made there.”
“Olive oil isn’t the answer, Don Orsati.”
“So there is a problem.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” The don regarded Keller carefully. “When you pull a tooth, Christopher, it will stop hurting.”
“Unless you have a bad dentist.”
“The only thing worse than a bad dentist is a bad companion.”
“It is better to be alone,” said Keller philosophically, “than to have bad companions.”
The don smiled. “You might have been born an Englishman, Christopher, but you have the soul of a Corsican.”
Keller stood. The don pushed the envelope across the tabletop.
“Are you sure you won’t stay for lunch?”
“I have plans.”
“Whatever they are,” the don said, “they’ll have to wait.”
“Why?”
“You have a visitor.”
Keller didn’t have to ask the visitor’s name. There were only a handful of people in the world who knew he was still alive, and only one who would dare to call on him unannounced.
“When did he arrive?”
“Last night,” answered the don.
“What does he want?”
“He wasn’t at liberty to say.” The don scrutinized Keller with the watchful eyes of a canine. “Is it my imagination,” he asked finally, “or has your mood suddenly improved?”
Keller departed without answering. Don Orsati watched him go. Then he looked down at the tabletop and swore softly. The Englishman had forgotten to take the envelope.
10 (#ulink_b21a091e-7b89-5459-9970-856b0fdbc7ea)
CORSICA (#ulink_b21a091e-7b89-5459-9970-856b0fdbc7ea)
CHRISTOPHER KELLER HAD ALWAYS TAKEN great care with his money. By his own calculation he had earned more than $20 million working for Don Anton Orsati and, through prudent investing, had made himself vastly wealthy. The bulk of his fortune was held by banks in Geneva and Zurich, but there were also accounts in Monaco, Liechtenstein, Brussels, Hong Kong, and the Cayman Islands. He even kept a small amount of money at a reputable bank in London. His British account manager believed him to be a reclusive resident of Corsica who, like Don Orsati, left the island infrequently. The government of France was of the same opinion. Keller paid taxes on his legitimate investment earnings and on the respectable salary he earned from the Orsati Olive Oil Company, where he served as director of central European sales. He voted in French elections, donated to French charities, rooted for French sports teams, and, on occasion, had been forced to utilize the services of the French national health care authority. He had never been charged with a crime of any sort, a noteworthy achievement for a man of the south, and his driving record was impeccable. All in all, with one significant exception, Christopher Keller was a model citizen.
An expert skier and climber, he had been quietly shopping for a chalet in the French Alps for some time. At present, he maintained a single residence, a villa of modest proportions located one valley over from the valley of the Orsatis. It had exterior walls of tawny brown, a red tile roof, a large blue swimming pool, and a wide terrace that received the sun in the morning and in the afternoon was shaded by pine. Inside, its large rooms were comfortably decorated in rustic furnishings covered in white, beige, and faded yellows. There were many shelves filled with serious books—Keller had briefly studied military history at Cambridge and was a voracious reader of politics and contemporary issues—and upon the walls hung a modest collection of modern and Impressionist paintings. The most valuable work was a small landscape by Monet, which Keller, through an intermediary, had acquired from Christie’s auction house in Paris. Standing before it now, one hand resting on his chin, his head tilted to one side, was Gabriel. He licked the tip of his forefinger, rubbed it over the surface, and shook his head slowly.
“What’s wrong?” asked the Englishman.
“It’s covered in surface grime. You really should let me clean it for you. It will only take—”
“I like it the way it is.”
Gabriel wiped his forefinger on the front of his jeans and turned to face Keller. The Englishman was ten years younger than Gabriel, four inches taller, and thirty pounds heavier, especially through the shoulders and arms, where he carried a lethal quantity of finely sculpted power and mass. His short hair was bleached blond from the sea; his skin was very dark from the sun. He had bright blue eyes, square cheekbones, and a thick chin with a chisel notch in the center of it. His mouth seemed permanently fixed in a mocking smile. Keller was a man without allegiance, without fear, and without morals, except when it came to matters of friendship and love. He had lived life on his own terms, and somehow he had won.
“I thought you were supposed to be in Rome,” he said.
“I was,” answered Gabriel. “But Graham Seymour dropped into town. He had something he wanted to show me.”
“What was it?”
“A photograph of a man walking through Heathrow Airport.”
Keller’s half-smile evaporated, his blue eyes narrowed. “How much does he know?”
“Everything, Christopher.”
“Am I in danger?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you agree to do a job for him.”
“What does he want?”
Gabriel smiled. “What you do best.”
Outside, the sun still held dominion over Keller’s terrace. They sat in a pair of comfortable garden chairs, a small wrought-iron table between them. On it lay Graham Seymour’s thick file on the professional exploits of one Eamon Quinn. Keller had yet to open it or even look at it. He was listening spellbound to Gabriel’s account of Quinn’s role in the murder of the princess.
When Gabriel finished, Keller held up the photograph of his recent passage through Heathrow Airport. “You gave me your word,” he said. “You swore that you would never tell Graham that we were working together.”
“I didn’t have to tell him. He already knew.”
“How?”
Gabriel explained.
“Devious bastard,” muttered Keller.
“He’s British,” said Gabriel. “It comes naturally.”
Keller looked at Gabriel carefully for a moment. “It’s funny,” he said, “but you don’t seem terribly upset about the situation.”
“It does present you with an interesting opportunity, Christopher.”
Beyond the rim of the valley a church bell tolled midday. Keller placed the photograph atop the file and lit a cigarette.
“Must you?” asked Gabriel, waving away the smoke.
“What choice do I have?”
“You can stop smoking and add several years to your life.”
“About Graham,” said Keller, exasperated.
“I suppose you can stay here in Corsica and hope he doesn’t decide to tell the French about you.”
“Or?”
“You can help me find Eamon Quinn.”
“And then?”
“You can go home again, Christopher.”
Keller raised his hand to the valley and said, “This is my home.”
“It isn’t real, Christopher. It’s a fantasy. It’s make-believe.”
“So are you.”
Gabriel smiled but said nothing. The church bell had fallen silent; the afternoon shadows were gathering at the edge of the terrace. Keller crushed out his cigarette and looked down at the unopened file.
“Interesting reading?” he asked.
“Quite.”
“Recognize anyone?”
“An MI5 man named Graham Seymour,” said Gabriel, “and an SAS officer who’s referred to only by his code name.”
“What is it?”
“Merchant.”
“Catchy.”
“I thought so, too.”
“What does it say about him?”
“It says he operated undercover in West Belfast for approximately a year in the late eighties.”
“Why did he stop?”
“His cover was blown. Apparently, there was a woman involved.”
“Does it mention her name?” asked Keller.
“No.”
“What happened next?”
“Merchant was kidnapped by the IRA and taken to a remote farmhouse for interrogation and execution. The farmhouse was in South Armagh. Quinn was there.”
“How did it end?”
“Badly.”
A gust of wind stirred the pine. Keller gazed upon his Corsican valley as though it were slipping from his grasp. Then he lit another cigarette and told Gabriel the rest of it.
11 (#ulink_cfc6f960-9302-5363-803b-c2c42f49c9f0)
CORSICA (#ulink_cfc6f960-9302-5363-803b-c2c42f49c9f0)
IT WAS KELLER’S APTITUDE WITH language that set him apart—not foreign languages, but the various ways in which the English language is spoken on the streets of Belfast and the six counties of Northern Ireland. The subtleties of local accents made it virtually impossible for officers of the SAS to operate undetected within the small, tightly knit communities of the province. As a result, most SAS men were forced to utilize the services of a Fred—the Regiment’s term for a local helper—when tracking IRA members or engaging in street surveillance. But not Keller. He developed the ability to mimic the various dialects of Ulster with the speed and confidence of a native. He could even shift accents at a moment’s notice—a Catholic from Armagh one minute, a Protestant from Belfast’s Shankill Road the next, then a Catholic from the Ballymurphy housing estates. His unique linguistic skills did not escape the notice of his superiors. Nor was it long before they came to the attention of an ambitious young intelligence officer who ran the Northern Ireland account for MI5.
“I assume,” said Gabriel, “that the young MI5 officer was Graham Seymour.”
Keller nodded. Then he explained that Seymour, in the late 1980s, was dissatisfied with the level of intelligence he was receiving from MI5’s informants in Northern Ireland. He wanted to insert his own agent into the IRA badlands of West Belfast to report on the movements and associations of known IRA commanders and volunteers. It was not a job for an ordinary MI5 officer. The agent would have to know how to handle himself in a world where one false step, one wrong glance, could get a man killed. Keller met with Seymour at a safe house in London and agreed to take on the assignment. Two months later he was back in Belfast posing as a Catholic named Michael Connelly. He took a two-room flat in the Divis Tower apartment complex on the Falls Road. His neighbor was a member of the IRA’s West Belfast Brigade. The British Army maintained an observation post on the roof and used the top two floors as barracks and office space. When the Troubles were at their worst, the soldiers came and went by helicopter. “It was madness,” said Keller, shaking his head slowly. “Absolute madness.”
While much of West Belfast was unemployed and on the dole, Keller soon found work as a deliveryman for a laundry service on the Falls Road. The job allowed him to move freely through the neighborhoods and enclaves of West Belfast without suspicion and gave him access to the homes and laundry of known IRA members. It was a remarkable achievement, but no accident. The laundry was owned and operated by British intelligence.
“It was one of our most closely held operations,” said Keller. “Even the prime minister wasn’t aware of it. We had a small fleet of vans, listening equipment, and a lab in the back. We tested every piece of laundry we could get our hands on for traces of explosives. And if we got a positive hit, we put the owner and his house under surveillance.”
Gradually, Keller began forming friendships with members of the dysfunctional community around him. His IRA neighbor invited him for dinner, and once, in an IRA bar on the Falls Road, a recruiter made a not-so-subtle pass at him, which Keller politely deflected. He attended mass regularly at St. Paul’s Church—as part of his training he had learned the rituals and doctrines of Catholicism—and on a wet Sunday in Lent he met a beautiful young girl there named Elizabeth Conlin. Her father was Ronnie Conlin, an IRA field commander for Ballymurphy.
“A serious player,” said Gabriel.
“As serious as it gets.”
“You decided to pursue the relationship.”
“I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”
“You were in love with her.”
Keller nodded slowly.
“How did you see her?”
“I used to sneak into her bedroom. She would hang a violet scarf in the window if it was safe. It was a tiny pebble-dash terrace house with walls like paper. I could hear her father in the next room. It was—”
“Madness,” said Gabriel.
Keller said nothing.
“Did Graham know?”
“Of course.”
“You told him?”
“I didn’t have to. I was under constant MI5 and SAS surveillance.”
“I assume he told you to break it off.”
“In no uncertain terms.”
“What did you do?”
“I agreed,” replied Keller. “With one condition.”
“You wanted to see her one last time.”
Keller lapsed into silence. And when finally he spoke again, his voice had changed. It had taken on the elongated vowels and rough edges of working-class West Belfast. He was no longer Christopher Keller; he was Michael Connelly, the laundry deliveryman from the Falls Road who had fallen in love with the beautiful daughter of an IRA chieftain from Ballymurphy. On his last night in Ulster, he left his van on the Springfield Road and scaled the garden wall of the Conlin house. The violet scarf was hanging in its usual place, but Elizabeth’s room was darkened. Keller soundlessly raised the window, parted the gauzy curtains, and slipped inside. Instantly, he absorbed a blow to the side of his head, like the blow of an ax blade, and began to fade from consciousness. The last thing he remembered before blacking out was the face of Ronnie Conlin.
“He was speaking to me,” said Keller. “He was telling me that I was about to die.”
Keller was bound, gagged, hooded, and bundled into the boot of a car. It took him from the slums of West Belfast to a farmhouse in South Armagh. There he was taken to a barn and beaten severely. Then he was tied to a chair for interrogation and trial. Four men from the IRA’s notorious South Armagh Brigade would serve as the jury. Eamon Quinn would serve as the prosecutor, judge, and executioner. He planned to administer the sentence with a field knife he had taken from a dead British soldier. Quinn was the IRA’s best bomb maker, a master technician, but when it came to personal killing he preferred the knife.
“He told me that if I cooperated, my death would be reasonable. If I didn’t, he was going to cut me to pieces.”
“What happened?”
“I got lucky,” said Keller. “They did a lousy job with the bindings, and I cut them to pieces instead. I did it so quickly they never knew what hit them.”
“How many?”
“Two,” answered Keller. “Then I got my hands on one of their guns and shot two more.”
“What happened to Quinn?”
“Quinn wisely fled the field of battle. Quinn lived to fight another day.”
The following morning the British Army announced that four members of the South Armagh Brigade had been killed in a raid on a remote IRA safe house. The official account made no mention of a kidnapped undercover SAS officer named Christopher Keller. Nor did it mention a laundry service on the Falls Road secretly owned by British intelligence. Keller was flown back to the mainland for treatment; the laundry was quietly closed. It was a major blow to British efforts in Northern Ireland.
“And Elizabeth?” asked Gabriel.
“They found her body two days later. Her head had been shaved. Her throat was slit.”
“Who did it?”
“I heard it was Quinn,” said Keller. “Apparently, he insisted on doing it himself.”
Upon his release from the hospital, Keller returned to SAS headquarters at Hereford for rest and recovery. He took long, punishing hikes on the Brecon Beacons and trained new recruits in the art of silent killing, but it was clear to his superiors that his experiences in Belfast had changed him. Then, in August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Keller rejoined his old Sabre squadron and was deployed to the Middle East. And on the evening of January 28, 1991, while searching for Scud missile launchers in Iraq’s western desert, his unit came under attack by Coalition aircraft in a tragic case of friendly fire. Only Keller survived. Enraged, he walked off the battlefield and, disguised as an Arab, slipped across the border into Syria. From there, he hiked westward across Turkey, Greece, and Italy, until he finally washed ashore in Corsica, where he fell into the waiting arms of Don Anton Orsati.
“Did you ever look for him?”
“Quinn?”
Gabriel nodded.
“The don forbade it.”
“But that didn’t stop you, did it?”
“Let’s just say I followed his career closely. I knew he went with the Real IRA after the Good Friday peace accords, and I knew he was the one who planted that bomb in the middle of Omagh.”
“And when he fled Ireland?”
“I made polite inquiries as to his whereabouts. Impolite inquiries, too.”
“Any of them bear fruit?”
“Most definitely.”
“But you never tried to kill him?”
“No,” said Keller, shaking his head. “The don forbade it.”
“But now you’ve got your chance.”
“With the blessing of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” Keller gave a brief smile. “Rather ironic, don’t you think?”
“What’s that?”
“Quinn drove me out of the game, and now he’s pulling me back in.” Keller looked at Gabriel seriously for a moment. “Are you sure you want to be involved in this?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because it’s personal,” replied Keller. “And when it’s personal, it tends to get messy.”
“I do personal all the time.”
“Messy, too.” The shadows had reclaimed the terrace. The wind made ripples upon the surface of Keller’s blue swimming pool. “And if I do this?” he asked. “What then?”
“Graham will give you a new British identity. A job, too.” Gabriel paused, then added, “If you’re interested.”
“A job doing what?”
“Use your imagination.”
Keller frowned. “What would you do if you were me?”
“I’d take the deal.”
“And give up all this?”
“It isn’t real, Christopher.”
Beyond the rim of the valley a church bell tolled one o’clock.
“What am I going to say to the don?” asked Keller.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s personal,” replied Gabriel. “And when it’s personal, it tends to get messy.”
There was a ferry leaving for Nice at six that evening. Gabriel boarded at half past five, drank a coffee in the café, and stepped onto the observation deck to wait for Keller. By 5:45 he had not arrived. Five additional minutes passed with no sign of him. Then Gabriel glimpsed a battered Renault turning into the car park and a moment later saw Keller trotting up the ramp with an overnight bag hanging from one powerful shoulder. They stood side by side at the railing and watched the lights of Ajaccio receding into the gloom. The gentle evening wind smelled of macchia, the dense undergrowth of scrub oak, rosemary, and lavender that covered much of the island. Keller drew the air deeply into his lungs before lighting a cigarette. The breeze carried his first exhalation of smoke across Gabriel’s face.
“Must you?”
Keller said nothing.
“I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind.”
“And let you go after Quinn alone?”
“You don’t think I can handle him?”
“Did I say that?”
Keller smoked in silence for a moment.
“How did the don take it?”
“He recited many Corsican proverbs about the ingratitude of children. And then he agreed to let me go.”
The lights of the island were growing dimmer; the wind smelled only of the sea. Keller reached into his coat pocket, removed a Corsican talisman, and held it out to Gabriel.
“A gift from the signadora.”
“We don’t believe in such things.”
“I’d take it if I were you. The old woman implied it could get nasty.”
“How nasty?”
Keller made no reply. Gabriel accepted the talisman and hung it around his neck. One by one the lights of the island went dark. And then it was gone.
12 (#ulink_90a874e7-363b-53a5-bb6f-3ac150d1720b)
DUBLIN (#ulink_90a874e7-363b-53a5-bb6f-3ac150d1720b)
TECHNICALLY, THE OPERATION UPON WHICH Gabriel and Christopher Keller embarked the following day was a joint undertaking between the Office and MI6. The British role was so black, however, that only Graham Seymour knew of it. Therefore, it was the Office that saw to the travel arrangements, and the Office that rented the Škoda sedan that was waiting in the long-term parking lot at Dublin Airport. Gabriel searched the undercarriage before climbing behind the wheel. Keller slid into the passenger seat and, frowning, closed the door.
“Couldn’t they have got something better than a Škoda?”
“It’s one of Ireland’s most popular cars, which means it won’t stand out.”
“What about guns?”
“Open the glove box.”
Keller did. Inside was a Beretta 9mm, fully loaded, along with a spare magazine and a suppressor.
“Only one?”
“We’re not going to war, Christopher.”
“That’s what you think.”
Keller closed the glove box, Gabriel inserted the key into the ignition. The engine hesitated, coughed, and then finally turned over.
“Still think they should have rented a Škoda?” asked Keller.
Gabriel slipped the car into gear. “Where do we start?”
“Ballyfermot.”
“Bally where?”
Keller pointed to the exit sign and said, “Bally that way.”
The Republic of Ireland was once a land with almost no violent crime. Until the late 1960s Ireland’s national police force, the Garda Síochána, numbered just seven thousand officers, and in Dublin there were only seven squad cars. Most crime was of the petty variety: burglaries, pickpocketing, the occasional strong-armed robbery. And when there was violence involved, it was usually fueled by passion, alcohol, or a combination of the two.
That changed with the outbreak of the Troubles across the border in Northern Ireland. Desperate for money and arms to fight the British Army, the Provisional IRA began robbing banks in the south. The low-level thieves from the impoverished slums and housing estates of Dublin learned from the Provos’ tactics and began carrying out daring armed heists of their own. The Gardaí, understaffed and outmatched, were quickly overwhelmed by the twin threat of the IRA and the local crime lords. By 1970 Ireland was tranquil no more. It was a gangland where criminals and revolutionaries operated with impunity.
In 1979 two unlikely events far from Ireland’s shores sped the country’s descent into lawlessness and social chaos. The first was the Iranian revolution. The second was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Both resulted in a flood of cheap heroin onto the streets of Western European cities. The drug poured into the slums of south Dublin in 1980. A year later it ravaged the ghettos of the north side. Lives were broken, families were shattered, and crime rates soared as desperate addicts tried to feed their habits. Entire communities became dystopian wastelands where junkies shot up openly in the streets and dealers were kings.
The economic miracle of the 1990s transformed Ireland from one of Europe’s poorest countries into one of its richest, but with prosperity came an even greater appetite for narcotics, especially cocaine and Ecstasy. The old crime bosses gave way to a new breed of kingpins who waged bloody wars over turf and market share. Where once Irish mobsters used sawed-off shotguns to enforce their will, the new gangland warriors armed themselves with AK-47s and other heavy weaponry. Bullet-riddled bodies began to appear on the streets of the housing estates. According to a Garda estimate in 2012, twenty-five violent drug gangs now plied their deadly trade in Ireland. Several had established lucrative ties to foreign organized crime groups, including remnants of the Real IRA.
“I thought they were against drugs,” said Gabriel.
“That might be true up there,” said Keller, pointing toward the north, “but down here in the Republic it’s a different story. For all intents and purposes, the Real IRA is just another drug gang. Sometimes they deal drugs directly. Sometimes they run protection rackets. Mainly, they extort money from the dealers.”
“What does Liam Walsh do?”
“A little of everything.”
Rain blurred the headlamps of the evening rush hour traffic. It was lighter than Gabriel had expected. He supposed it was the economy. Ireland’s had fallen farther and faster than most. Even the drug dealers were hurting.
“Walsh has republicanism in his veins,” Keller was saying. “His father was IRA, and so were his uncles and brothers. He went with the Real IRA after the great schism, and when the war effectively ended he came down to Dublin to make his fortune in the drug business.”
“What’s his connection to Quinn?”
“Omagh.” Keller pointed to the right and said, “There’s your turn.”
Gabriel guided the car into Kennelsfort Road. It was lined on both sides by terraces of small two-story houses. Not quite the Irish miracle, but not a slum, either.
“Is this Ballyfermot?”
“Palmerstown.”
“Which way?”
With a wave of his hand, Keller instructed Gabriel to continue straight. They skirted an industrial park of low gray warehouses, and suddenly they were on Ballyfermot Road. After a moment they came upon a parade of sad little shops: a discount department store, a discount linen store, a discount optician, a chip shop. Across the street was a Tesco supermarket, and next to the supermarket was a betting parlor. Sheltering in the entrance were four men in black leather coats. Liam Walsh was the smallest of the lot. He was smoking a cigarette; they were all smoking cigarettes. Gabriel turned into the Tesco car park and eased into an empty space. It had a clear view of the betting parlor.
“Maybe you should leave the engine running,” said Keller.
“Why?”
“It might not start again.”
Gabriel killed the engine and doused the headlamps. Rain beat heavily against the windscreen. After a few seconds Liam Walsh vanished in a blurry kaleidoscope of light. Then Gabriel flicked the wipers and Walsh reappeared. A long black Mercedes sedan had pulled up outside the betting parlor. It was the only Mercedes on the street, probably the only one in the neighborhood. Walsh was talking to the driver through the open window.
“He looks like a real pillar of the community,” said Gabriel quietly.
“That’s how he likes to portray himself.”
“So why is he standing outside a betting parlor?”
“He wants the other gangs to know that he’s watching his turf. A rival tried to kill him on that very spot last year. If you look closely, you can see the bullet holes in the wall.”
The Mercedes moved off. Liam Walsh returned to the shelter of the entrance.
“Who are those nice-looking fellows with him?”
“The two on the left are his bodyguards. The other one is his second-in-command.”
“Real IRA?”
“To the core.”
“Armed?”
“Most definitely.”
“So what do we do?”
“We wait for him to make a move.”
“Here?”
Keller shook his head. “If they see us sitting in a parked car, they’ll assume we’re Garda or members of a rival gang. And if they assume that, we’re dead.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t sit here.”
Keller nodded toward the chip shop on the other side of the road and climbed out. Gabriel followed after him. They stood side by side along the edge of the road, hands thrust into their pockets, heads bowed against the windblown rain, waiting for an opening in the traffic.
“They’re watching us,” said Keller.
“You noticed that, too?”
“Hard not to.”
“Does Walsh know your face?”
“He does now.”
The traffic broke; they crossed the road and headed toward the entrance of the chip shop. “It might be better if you don’t speak,” said Keller. “This isn’t the sort of neighborhood that gets a lot of visitors from exotic lands.”
“I speak perfect English.”
“That’s the problem.”
Keller opened the door and went inside first. It was a narrow room with a cracked linoleum floor and peeling walls. The air was thick with grease, starch, and the faint smell of wet wool. There was a pretty young girl behind the counter and an empty table against the window. Gabriel sat with his back to the road while Keller went over to the counter and ordered in the accent of someone from south Dublin.
“Very impressive,” murmured Gabriel when Keller joined him. “For a minute there I thought you were about to break into ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.’”
“As far as that pretty young lass is concerned, I’m as Irish as she is.”
“Yes,” said Gabriel doubtfully. “And I’m Oscar Wilde.”
“You don’t think I can pass for an Irishman?”
“Maybe one who’s been on a very long vacation in the sun.”
“That’s my story.”
“Where have you been?”
“Majorca,” replied Keller. “The Irish love Majorca, especially Irish mobsters.”
Gabriel glanced around the interior of the café. “I wonder why.”
The girl walked over to the table and deposited a plate of chips and two Styrofoam cups of milky tea. As she was leaving, the door opened and two pale men in their mid-twenties hurried in out of the weather. A woman in a damp coat and downtown shoes entered a moment later. The two men took a table near Keller and Gabriel and began speaking in a dialect that Gabriel found almost impenetrable. The woman sat at the back of the shop. She had only tea to drink and was reading a worn paperback book.
“What’s going on outside?” asked Gabriel.
“Four men standing in front of a betting parlor. One man looking like he’s had enough of the rain.”
“Where does he live?”
“Not far,” answered Keller. “He likes to live among the people.”
Gabriel drank some of the tea and made a face. Keller pushed the plate of chips across the table. “Eat some.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I want to live long enough to see my children born.”
“Good idea.” Keller smiled, then added, “Men of your age really should be careful about what they eat.”
“Watch yourself.”
“How old are you, exactly?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Problems with memory loss?”
Gabriel drank some of the tea. Keller nibbled at the chips.
“They’re not as good as the fries in the south of France,” he said.
“Did you get a receipt?”
“Why would I need a receipt?”
“I hear the bookkeepers at MI6 are very picky.”
“Let’s not get carried away about MI6 just yet. I haven’t made any decisions.”
“Sometimes our best decisions are made for us.”
“You sound like the don.” Keller ate another chip. “Is it true about MI6 bookkeepers?”
“I was just making conversation.”
“Are yours tough?”
“The worst.”
“But not with you.”
“Not so much.”
“So why didn’t they get you something better than a Škoda?”
“The Škoda is fine.”
“I hope he’ll fit in the trunk.”
“We’ll slam the lid on him a few times if we have to.”
“What about the safe house?”
“I’m sure it’s lovely, Christopher.”
Keller didn’t appear convinced. He picked up another chip, thought better of it, and dropped it onto the plate.
“What’s going on behind me?” he asked.
“Two lads speaking no known language. One woman reading.”
“What’s she reading?”
“I believe it’s John Banville.”
Keller nodded thoughtfully, his eyes on Ballyfermot Road.
“What do you see?” asked Gabriel.
“One man standing outside a betting parlor. Three men getting into a car.”
“What kind of car?”
“Black Mercedes.”
“Better than a Škoda.”
“Much.”
“So what do we do?”
“We leave the fries and take the tea.”
“When?”
Keller rose to his feet.
13 (#ulink_3ddb5e54-9b84-5df5-aeb2-e82788b87378)
BALLYFERMOT, DUBLIN (#ulink_3ddb5e54-9b84-5df5-aeb2-e82788b87378)
THEY DROPPED THE STYROFOAM CUPS into a rubbish bin in the Tesco parking lot and climbed into the Škoda. This time, Keller drove; it was his turf. He eased into Ballyfermot Road and worked his way through the traffic until there were two cars separating them from the Mercedes. He drove calmly, one hand balanced atop the steering wheel, the other resting on the automatic shift. His eyes were straight ahead. Gabriel had commandeered the side-view mirror and was watching the traffic behind them.
“Well?” asked Keller.
“You’re very good, Christopher. You’re going to make a fine MI6 officer.”
“I was asking whether we’re being followed.”
“We’re not.”
Keller removed his hand from the shift and used it to extract a cigarette from his coat pocket. Gabriel tapped the black-and-yellow notice on the visor and said, “This is a no-smoking car.”
Keller lit the cigarette. Gabriel lowered his window a few inches to vent the smoke.
“They’re stopping,” he said.
“I can see that.”
The Mercedes turned into an angled parking space outside a newsagent. For a few seconds no one got out. Then Liam Walsh stepped from the rear passenger-side door and entered the shop. Keller drove about fifty meters farther along the road and parked outside a takeaway pizza parlor. He killed the lights but left the engine running.
“I suppose he needed to pick up a few things on his way home.”
“Like what?”
“A Herald,” suggested Keller.
“No one reads newspapers anymore, Christopher. Haven’t you heard?”
Keller glanced toward the pizza parlor. “Maybe you should go inside and get us a couple of slices.”
“How do I order without speaking?”
“You’ll think of something.”
“What kind of pizza do you like?”
“Go,” said Keller.
Gabriel climbed out and entered the shop. There were three people in the queue in front of him. He stood there waiting as the smell of warm cheese and yeast washed over him. Then he heard a brief burst of a car horn and, turning, saw the black Mercedes speeding off along Ballyfermot Road. He went back outside and lowered himself into the passenger seat. Keller reversed out of the space, slipped the car into drive, and accelerated slowly.
“Did he buy anything?” asked Gabriel.
“Couple of papers and a pack of Winstons.”
“How did he look when he came out?”
“Like he really didn’t need newspapers or cigarettes.”
“I assume the Garda watches him on a regular basis?”
“I certainly hope so.”
“Which means he’s used to being followed from time to time by men in unmarked sedans.”
“One would think.”
“He’s turning,” said Gabriel.
“I can see that.”
The car had turned into a bleak, unlit street of small terraced houses. No traffic, no shops, no place where two outsiders might conceal themselves. Keller pulled to the curb and doused the headlamps. A hundred meters farther down the street, the Mercedes nosed into a drive. The lights of the car went dark. Four doors opened, four men climbed out.
“Chez Walsh?” asked Gabriel.
Keller nodded.
“Married?”
“Not anymore.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Could be.”
“What about a dog?”
“You have a problem with dogs?”
Gabriel didn’t answer. Instead, he watched the four men approach the house and disappear through the front door.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“I suppose we could spend the next several days waiting for a better opportunity.”
“Or?”
“We take him now.”
“There are four of them and two of us.”
“One,” said Keller. “You’re not coming.”
“Why not?”
“Because the future chief of the Office can’t get mixed up in something like this. Besides,” Keller added, patting the bulge beneath his jacket, “we only have one gun.”
“Four against one,” said Gabriel after a moment. “Not very good odds.”
“Actually, given my history, I like my chances.”
“How do you intend to play it?”
“The same way we used to play it in Northern Ireland,” answered Keller. “Big boys’ games, big boys’ rules.”
Keller climbed out without another word and soundlessly closed the door. Gabriel swung a leg over the center console and slid behind the wheel. He flicked the wipers and glimpsed Keller walking along the street, hands in his coat pockets, shoulders tilted into the wind. He checked his BlackBerry. It was 8:27 p.m. in Dublin, 10:27 p.m. in Jerusalem. He thought of his beautiful young wife sitting alone in their apartment in Narkiss Street, and of his two unborn children resting comfortably in her womb. And here he was on a desolate street in south Dublin, a sentinel on yet another night watch, waiting for a friend to settle an old score. The rain hammered against the windscreen, the bleak street became a watery dreamscape. Gabriel flicked the wipers a second time and saw Keller pass through a sphere of yellow sodium light. And when he flicked the wipers a third time, Keller was gone.
The house was located at 48 Rossmore Road. It had a gray pebble-dash exterior, with a white-framed window on the ground floor and two more on the second. The narrow drive had space enough for a single car. Next to the drive was a gated walkway, and next to the walkway was a patch of grass bordered by a low hedgerow. It was respectable in every way, save for the man who lived there.
Like all the houses at that end of the street, Number 48 had a garden in back, beyond which spread the sporting fields of a Catholic school for boys. The entrance to the school was around the corner on Le Fanu Road. The main gate was open; there seemed to be a gathering of the parent body in the assembly hall. Keller passed through the gate unnoticed and struck out across a blacktop lined for games of every sort. And suddenly he was back at the dreary school in Surrey where his parents had banished him at the age of ten. He was the boy of whom much was expected—a good family, an excellent student, a natural leader. The older boys never touched him because they feared him. The headmaster once let him off without a beating because secretly the headmaster feared him, too.
At the edge of the blacktop was a row of dripping trees. Keller passed beneath their bare limbs and set out across the darkened sporting fields. Along their northern edge rose a wall, approximately two meters in height, covered in vines. Beyond it were the rear gardens of the houses lining Rossmore Road. Keller went to the farthest corner of the field and paced off fifty-seven steps precisely. Then, silently, he scaled the wall and dropped toward the ground on the other side. By the time his shoes struck the damp earth, he had drawn the silenced Beretta and leveled it toward the back door of the house. Lights burned within; shadows moved against the drawn curtains. Keller held the gun tightly in his hands, watching, listening. Big boys’ games, he thought. Big boys’ rules.
At ten minutes past nine o’clock, Gabriel’s BlackBerry vibrated softly. He raised it to his ear, listened, and then killed the connection. The rain had given way to a listless mist; Rossmore Road was empty of traffic and pedestrians. He drove to the house at Number 48, parked in the street, and switched off the engine. Again his BlackBerry vibrated, but this time he did not answer. Instead, he pulled on a pair of flesh-colored rubber gloves, climbed out, and opened the modest-sized trunk. Inside was a suitcase that had been left by the courier from Dublin Station. Gabriel removed it and carried it up the garden walk. The front door yielded to his touch; he stepped inside and closed it quietly behind him. Keller stood in the entrance hall, the Beretta in his hand. The air smelled of cordite and, faintly, of blood. It was a smell that was all too familiar to Gabriel. He walked past Keller without a word and entered the sitting room. A cloud of smoke hung on the air. Three men, each with a neat bullet hole in the center of his forehead, a fourth with a smashed nose and a jaw that looked as if it had been dislodged with a sledgehammer. Gabriel reached down and searched the neck for a pulse. Then, after finding one, he unzipped the suitcase and went to work.
The suitcase contained three rolls of heavy-duty duct tape, a dozen disposable flex cuffs, a nylon bag capable of holding a man six feet in height, a black hood, a blue-and-white tracksuit, espadrilles, two changes of undergarments, a first aid kit, earplugs, vials of sedative, syringes, rubbing alcohol, and a copy of the Koran. The Office referred to the contents of the suitcase as a mobile detainee pack. Among veteran field agents, however, it was known as a terrorist travel kit.
After determining that Walsh was in no danger of expiration, Gabriel mummified him in duct tape. He didn’t bother with the plastic flex cuffs; in matters of art and physical restraint, he was a traditionalist by nature. As he was applying the last swaths of tape to Walsh’s mouth and eyes, the Irishman began to regain consciousness. Gabriel quieted him with a dose of the sedative. Then, with Keller’s help, he placed Walsh in the duffel bag and pulled the zipper closed.
The house had no garage, which meant they had no choice but to take Walsh out the front door, in plain view of the neighbors. Gabriel found the key to the Mercedes on the body of one of the dead men. He moved the car into the street and backed the Škoda into the drive. Keller carried Walsh outside alone and deposited him in the open trunk. Then he climbed into the passenger seat and allowed Gabriel to drive. It was for the best. In Gabriel’s experience, it was unwise to allow a man who had just killed three people to operate a motor vehicle.
“Did you turn out the lights?”
Keller nodded.
“What about the doors?”
“They’re locked.”
Keller removed the suppressor and the magazine from the Beretta and placed all three in the glove box. Gabriel turned into the street and started back toward Ballyfermot Road.
“How many rounds did you fire?” he asked.
“Three,” answered Keller.
“How long before the Garda finds those bodies?”
“It’s not the Garda we should be worried about.”
Keller flicked his cigarette into the darkness. Gabriel saw sparks explode in his rearview mirror.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Like I never left.”
“That’s the problem with revenge, Christopher. It never makes you feel better.”
“That’s true,” said Keller, lighting another cigarette. “And I’m just getting started.”
14 (#ulink_1b84e554-2010-5faf-942a-4c248bd082e9)
CLIFDEN, COUNTY GALWAY (#ulink_1b84e554-2010-5faf-942a-4c248bd082e9)
THE COTTAGE STOOD ON DOONEN ROAD, perched atop a high rocky bluff overlooking the dark waters of Salt Lake. It had three bedrooms, a large kitchen with modern appliances, a formal dining room, a small library and study, and a cellar with walls of stone. The owner, a successful Dublin lawyer, had wanted a thousand euros for a week. Housekeeping had countered with fifteen hundred for two, and the lawyer, who rarely received offers in winter, accepted the deal. The money appeared in his bank account the next morning. It came from something called Taurus Global Entertainment, a television production company based in the Swiss city of Montreux. The lawyer was told the two men who would be staying in his cottage were Taurus executives who were coming to Ireland to work on a project that was sensitive in nature. That much, at least, was true.
The cottage was set back from Doonen Road by approximately a hundred meters. There was a flimsy aluminum gate that had to be opened and closed by hand and a gravel drive that wound its way steeply up the bluff through the gorse and the heather. On the highest point of the land stood three ancient trees bowed by the wind that blew from the North Atlantic and up the narrows of Clifden Bay. The wind was cold and without remorse. It rattled the windows of the cottage, clawed at the tiles of the roof, and prowled the rooms each time a door opened. The small terrace was uninhabitable, a no-man’s-land. Even the gulls did not stay there long.
Doonen Road was not a real road but a narrow strip of pavement, scarcely wide enough for a single car, with a ribbon of green grass down the center. Holidaymakers traveled it occasionally, but mainly it served as the back door to Clifden village. It was a young town by Irish standards, founded in 1814 by a landowner and sheriff named John d’Arcy who wished to create an island of order within the violent and lawless wilds of Connemara. D’Arcy built a castle for himself, and for the villagers a lovely town with paved streets and squares and a pair of churches with steeples that could be seen for miles. The castle was now a ruin, but the village, once virtually depopulated by the Great Famine, was among the most vibrant in the west of Ireland.
One of the men staying in the rented cottage, the smaller of the two, hiked to the village each day, usually in late morning, dressed in a dark green oilskin coat with a rucksack over his shoulder and a flat cap pulled low over his brow. He would purchase a few things at the supermarket and snare a bottle or two from Ferguson Fine Wines, Italian usually, sometimes French. And then, having acquired his provisions, he would wander past the shop windows along Main Street with the air of a man who was preoccupied by weightier matters. On one occasion he popped into the Lavelle Art Gallery to have a quick peek at the stock. The proprietor would later recall that he seemed unusually knowledgeable about paintings. His accent was hard to place. Maybe German, maybe something else. It didn’t matter; to the people of Connemara, everyone else had an accent.
On the fourth day his stroll along Main Street was more perfunctory than usual. He entered only a single shop, the newsagent, and purchased four packets of American cigarettes and a copy of the Independent. The front page was filled with the news from Dublin, where three members of the Real IRA had been found slain in a house in Ballyfermot. Another man was missing and presumed abducted. The Garda was searching for him. So, too, were elements of the Real IRA.
“Drug gangs,” muttered the man behind the counter.
“Terrible,” agreed the visitor with the accent no one could quite place.
He inserted the newspaper into his rucksack and, with some reluctance, the cigarettes. Then he hiked back to the cottage owned by the lawyer from Dublin, who, as it turned out, was deeply loathed by the full-time residents of Clifden. The other man, the one with skin like leather, was listening intently to the midday news on RTÉ.
“We’re close,” was all he said.
“When?”
“Maybe tonight.”
The smaller of the two men went onto the terrace while the other man smoked. A black storm was pushing up Clifden Bay, and the wind felt as though it were filled with shrapnel. Five minutes was all he could stand. Then he went back inside, into the smoke and the tension of the wait. He felt no shame. Even the gulls did not stay on the terrace for long.
Throughout his long career, Gabriel had had the misfortune of meeting many terrorists: Palestinian terrorists, Egyptian terrorists, Saudi terrorists, terrorists motivated by faith, terrorists motivated by loss, terrorists who had been born in the worst slums of the Arab world, terrorists who had been raised in the material comfort of the West. Oftentimes, he imagined what these men might have achieved had they chosen another path. Many were highly intelligent, and in their unforgiving eyes he saw lifesaving cures never found, software never devised, music never composed, and poems never written. Liam Walsh, however, made no such impression. Walsh was a killer without remorse or proper education who had no ambition in life other than the destruction of life and property. In his case a career in terrorism, even by the reduced standards of the diehard Irish republicans, was about the best he could have hoped for.
He was without physical fear, however, and possessed a natural obduracy that made him difficult to break. For the first forty-eight hours he was left in total isolation in the damp chill of the cellar, blindfolded, gagged, deafened by earplugs, immobilized by duct tape. He was offered no food, only water, which he refused. Keller saw to his bathroom needs, which were minimal given his dietary restrictions. When necessary, he addressed Walsh in the accent of a Protestant of the working classes from East Belfast. The Irishman was offered no way out of his predicament, and he did not ask for one. Having seen three of his mates killed in the blink of an eye, he seemed resigned to his fate. Like the SAS, Irish terrorists and drug gangsters played by big boys’ rules.
On the morning of the third day, maddened by thirst, he partook of a few ounces of room-temperature water. At midday he drank tea with milk and sugar, and in the evening he was given more tea and a single slice of toasted bread. It was then that Keller addressed him for the first time at any length. “You’re in a shitload of trouble, Liam,” he said in his East Belfast accent. “And the only way out is to tell me what I want to know.”
“Who are you?” asked Walsh through the pain of his broken jaw.
“That depends entirely on you,” replied Keller. “If you talk to me, I’ll be your best friend in the world. If you don’t, you’re going to end up like your three friends.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Omagh,” was all Keller said.
On the morning of the fourth day, Keller removed the plugs from Walsh’s ears and the gag from his mouth and elaborated on the situation in which the Irishman now found himself. Keller claimed to be a member of a small Protestant vigilante group seeking justice for the victims of republican terrorism. He suggested it had ties to the Ulster Volunteer Force, the loyalist paramilitary group that had killed at least five hundred people, mainly Roman Catholic civilians, during the worst of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The UVF accepted a ceasefire in 1994, but its murals, with their images of armed masked men, still adorned walls in Protestant neighborhoods and towns in Ulster. Many of the murals bore the same slogan: “Prepared for peace, ready for war.” The same could have been said for Keller.
“I’m looking for the one who built the bomb,” he explained. “You know the bomb I’m talking about, Liam. The bomb that killed twenty-nine innocent people in Omagh. You were there that day. You were in the car with him.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You were there, Liam,” Keller repeated. “And you were in contact with him after the movement went to shit. He came down here to Dublin. You looked after him until it got too hot.”
“It’s not true. None of it’s true.”
“He’s back in circulation, Liam. Tell me where I can find him.”
Walsh said nothing for a moment. “And if I tell you?” he asked finally.
“You’ll spend some time in captivity, a long time, but you’ll live.”
“Bullshit,” spat Walsh.
“We’re not interested in you, Liam,” answered Keller calmly. “Only him. Tell us where we can find him, and we’ll let you live. Play dumb, and I’m going to kill you. And it won’t be with a nice neat bullet to the head. It’ll hurt, Liam. It’ll hurt badly.”
That afternoon a storm laid siege to the length and breadth of Connemara. Gabriel sat by the fire reading from a volume of Fitzgerald while Keller drove the windblown countryside looking for unusual Garda activity. Liam Walsh remained in isolation in the cellar, bound, gagged, blinded, deafened. He was given no liquid or food. By that evening he was so weakened by hunger and dehydration that Keller almost had to carry him to the toilet.
“How long?” asked Gabriel over dinner.
“We’re close,” said Keller.
“That’s what you said earlier.”
Keller was silent.
“Is there anything we can do to hurry things along? I’d like to be out of here before the Garda come knocking on the door.”
“Or the Real IRA,” added Keller.
“Well?”
“He’s immune to pain at this point.”
“What about water?”
“Water’s always good.”
“Does he know?”
“He knows.”
“Do you need help?”
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Daniel Silva
No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva delivers another stunning thriller in his latest action-packed tale of high stakes international intrigue featuring the inimitable Gabriel Allon.She is an iconic member of the British Royal Family, beloved for her beauty and charitable works, resented by her former husband and his mother, the Queen of England. When a bomb explodes aboard her holiday yacht, British intelligence turns to one man to track down herkiller: legendary spy and assassin Gabriel Allon.Gabriel’s target is Eamon Quinn, a master bomb maker and mercenary of death who sells his services to the highest bidder. Fortunately Gabriel does not pursue him alone; at his side is Christopher Keller, a British commando turned professional assassin who knows Quinn’s murderous handiwork all too well.And though Gabriel does not realize it, he is stalking an old enemy—a cabal of evil that wants nothing more than to see him dead. Gabriel will find it necessary to oblige them, for when a man is out for vengeance, death has its distinct advantages….
Daniel Silva
The English Spy
Copyright (#u4b2a7299-a82f-5ca2-85b7-eb236d09bf93)
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Daniel Silva 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover photographs © Peter Bagi / Gallery Stock (stairwell); Henry Steadman (figure).
Map designed by Leah Nick Springer
Flag illustration © charnsitr/Shutterstock, Inc.
Daniel Silva asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007552337
Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780007552320
Version: 2015-11-17
Dedication (#u4b2a7299-a82f-5ca2-85b7-eb236d09bf93)
For Betsy and Andy Lack.
And, as always, for my wife, Jamie,
and my children, Lily and Nicholas.
Epigraph (#u4b2a7299-a82f-5ca2-85b7-eb236d09bf93)
When a man rubs out a pencil-mark, he should be careful to see that the line is quite obliterated. For if a secret is to be kept, no precautions are too great.
— GRAHAM GREENE, THE MINISTRY OF FEAR
No more tears now; I will think upon revenge.
— MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS
Table of Contents
Cover (#ua1c69d8a-051f-5dc0-8feb-cccd5de15ec3)
Title Page (#u271fb7a4-0e9e-5801-b107-a38e8922a2b1)
Copyright (#u88e56b72-88d3-52ae-bc7f-16b383c366b2)
Dedication (#u054fbe0d-8289-5318-bb6a-ee89d3fb2cb6)
Epigraph (#u304f12c0-b7c2-56bc-b23f-4d45b569ec8c)
Map (#u225e85ba-49ec-5a04-9a52-c95fce6e68e8)
Part One: Death of a Princess (#u66a2192c-01de-593d-b355-3d1b517f89bc)
Chapter 1: Gustavia, Saint Barthélemy (#u52482dae-5560-50cf-a5cc-6098d3c999cd)
Chapter 2: Off the Leeward Islands (#u5a8522cd-4fe7-5057-b565-b0554a2c655e)
Chapter 3: The Caribbean–London (#ucd1c798d-daef-559f-901b-ad93c56192da)
Chapter 4: Vauxhall Cross, London (#ue9be81eb-6abd-5fed-a696-965ef46c34a1)
Chapter 5: Fiumicino Airport, Rome (#ua2aa2e5d-2ca3-5d50-9927-b581cedb89b4)
Chapter 6: Via Gregoriana, Rome (#u6ecfb9fe-ae7c-5732-9bc2-a36e785846fe)
Chapter 7: Via Gregoriana, Rome (#uf260c59b-e1a0-5290-a8aa-f198e0393ff5)
Chapter 8: Via Gregoriana, Rome (#ue31e7bdc-e61e-5584-81a2-accaf432e83d)
Chapter 9: Berlin–Corsica (#u004ac6f4-bd27-5aee-9e1e-f816c137811c)
Chapter 10: Corsica (#u613a3705-47ec-5ca8-8469-d5ccb06bb38f)
Chapter 11: Corsica (#u253afd0e-b333-587c-a19b-fa58ec7e1824)
Chapter 12: Dublin (#u1f3e2a84-a281-51a1-bc36-e733926e2b5c)
Chapter 13: Ballyfermot, Dublin (#ud6cc0604-5a96-5a24-86d9-d807884b50cd)
Chapter 14: Clifden, County Galway (#u82c450cf-9631-5287-bdb6-9877b6e24bbf)
Chapter 15: Thames House, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16: Clifden, County Galway (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17: Clifden, County Galway (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18: Omagh, Northern Ireland (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19: Great Victoria Street, Belfast (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20: The Ardoyne, West Belfast (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21: The Ardoyne, West Belfast (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22: Warring Street, Belfast (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23: Belfast–Lisbon (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24: Bairro Alto, Lisbon (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25: Bairro Alto, Lisbon (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26: Heathrow Airport, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27: Brompton Road, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two: Death of a Spy (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28: London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29: Dartmoor, Devon (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30: Wormwood Cottage, Dartmoor (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31: Wormwood Cottage, Dartmoor (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32: Wormwood Cottage, Dartmoor (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33: Gunwalloe Cove, Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34: Gunwalloe Cove, Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35: Gunwalloe Cove, Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36: Highgate, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37: Wormwood Cottage, Dartmoor (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38: London–the Kremlin (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39: London–Vienna (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40: Intercontinental Hotel, Vienna (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41: Lower Austria (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42: Lower Austria (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43: Lower Austria (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44: Sparrow Hills, Moscow (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45: Copenhagen, Denmark (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46: Vienna (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47: Vienna (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48: Vienna (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49: Rotterdam, the Netherlands (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50: Vienna–Hamburg (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51: Piccadilly, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52: Fleetwood, England (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53: Thames House, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54: Lord Street, Fleetwood (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55: Hamburg (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 56: Neustadt, Hamburg (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 57: Hamburg (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 58: Hamburg (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 59: Northern Germany (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Three: Bandit Country (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 60: Vauxhall Cross, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 61: Bristol, England (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 62: 10 Downing Street (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 63: Cornwall, England (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 64: Guy’s Hospital, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 65: Gunwalloe Cove, Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 66: Thames House, London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 67: West Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 68: Gunwalloe Cove, Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 69: Gunwalloe Cove, Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 70: County Down, Northern Ireland (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 71: The Ardoyne, West Belfast (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 72: Crossmaglen, County Armagh (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 73: The Ardoyne, West Belfast (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 74: Crossmaglen, County Armagh (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 75: Union Street, Belfast (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 76: Creggan Forest, County Antrim (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 77: Randalstown, County Antrim (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 78: Crossmaglen, South Armagh (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 79: Crossmaglen, South Armagh (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Four: Home (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 80: South Armagh–London (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 81: Victoria Road, South Kensington (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 82: Narkiss Street, Jerusalem (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 83: Narkiss Street, Jerusalem (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 84: Mount Herzl, Jerusalem (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 85: Buenos Aires (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading ... (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also Written by Daniel Silva (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PART ONE (#u4b2a7299-a82f-5ca2-85b7-eb236d09bf93)
DEATH OF A PRINCESS (#u4b2a7299-a82f-5ca2-85b7-eb236d09bf93)
1 (#u4b2a7299-a82f-5ca2-85b7-eb236d09bf93)
GUSTAVIA, SAINT BARTHÉLEMY (#u4b2a7299-a82f-5ca2-85b7-eb236d09bf93)
NONE OF IT WOULD HAVE happened if Spider Barnes hadn’t tied one on at Eddy’s two nights before the Aurora was due to set sail. Spider was regarded as the finest waterborne chef in the entire Caribbean, irascible but altogether irreplaceable, a mad genius in a starched white jacket and apron. Spider, you see, was classically trained. Spider had done a stint in Paris. Spider had done London. Spider had done New York, San Francisco, and an unhappy layover in Miami before leaving the restaurant biz for good and taking to the freedom of the sea. He worked the big charters now, the kind of boats the film stars, rappers, moguls, and poseurs rented whenever they wanted to impress. And when Spider wasn’t behind his stove, he was invariably propped atop one of the better bar stools on dry land. Eddy’s was in his top five in the Caribbean Basin, perhaps his top five worldwide. He started at seven o’clock that evening with a few beers, blew a reefer in the shadowed garden at nine, and at ten was contemplating his first glass of vanilla rum. All seemed right with the world. Spider Barnes was buzzed and in paradise.
But then he spotted Veronica, and the evening took a dangerous turn. She was new to the island, a lost girl, a European of uncertain provenance who served drinks to day-trippers at the dive bar next door. She was pretty, though—pretty as a floral garnish, Spider remarked to his nameless drinking companion—and he lost his heart to her in ten seconds flat. He proposed marriage, which was Spider’s favorite approach, and when she turned him down he suggested a roll in the sheets instead. Somehow it worked, and the two were seen teetering into a torrential downpour at midnight. And that was the last time anyone laid eyes on him, at 12:03 a.m. on a wet night in Gustavia, soaked to the skin, drunk and in love yet again.
The captain of the Aurora, a 154-foot luxury motor yacht based out of Nassau, was a man called Ogilvy—Reginald Ogilvy, ex–Royal Navy, a benevolent dictator who slept with a copy of the rulebook on his bedside table, along with his grandfather’s King James Bible. He had never cared for Spider Barnes, never less so than at nine the next morning when Spider failed to appear at the regular meeting of the crew and cabin staff. It was no ordinary meeting, for the Aurora was being made ready for a very important guest. Only Ogilvy knew her identity. He also knew that her party would include a team of security men and that she was demanding, to say the least, which explained why he was alarmed by the absence of his renowned chef.
Ogilvy informed the Gustavia harbormaster of the situation, and the harbormaster duly informed the local gendarmerie. A pair of officers knocked on the door of Veronica’s little hillside cottage, but there was no sign of her either. Next they undertook a search of the various spots on the island where the drunken and brokenhearted typically washed ashore after a night of debauchery. A red-faced Swede at Le Select claimed to have bought Spider a Heineken that very morning. Someone else said he saw him stalking the beach at Colombier, and there was a report, never confirmed, of an inconsolable creature baying at the moon in the wilds of Toiny.
The gendarmes faithfully followed each lead. Then they scoured the island from north to south, stem to stern, all to no avail. A few minutes after sundown, Reginald Ogilvy informed the crew of the Aurora that Spider Barnes had vanished and that a suitable replacement would have to be found in short order. The crew fanned out across the island, from the waterside eateries of Gustavia to the beach shacks of the Grand Cul-de-Sac. And by nine that evening, in the unlikeliest of places, they had found their man.
He had arrived on the island at the height of hurricane season and settled into the clapboard cottage at the far end of the beach at Lorient. He had no possessions other than a canvas duffel bag, a stack of well-read books, a shortwave radio, and a rattletrap motor scooter that he’d acquired in Gustavia for a few grimy banknotes and a smile. The books were thick, weighty, and learned; the radio was of a quality rarely seen any longer. Late at night, when he sat on his sagging veranda reading by the light of his battery-powered lamp, the sound of music floated above the rustle of the palm fronds and the gentle slap and recession of the surf. Jazz and classical, mainly, sometimes a bit of reggae from the stations across the water. At the top of every hour he would lower his book and listen intently to the news on the BBC. Then, when the bulletin was over, he would search the airwaves for something to his liking, and the palm trees and the sea would once again dance to the rhythm of his music.
At first, it was unclear as to whether he was vacationing, passing through, hiding out, or planning to make the island his permanent address. Money seemed not to be an issue. In the morning, when he dropped by the boulangerie for his bread and coffee, he always tipped the girls generously. And in the afternoon, when he stopped at the little market near the cemetery for his German beer and American cigarettes, he never bothered to collect the loose change that came rattling out of the automatic dispenser. His French was reasonable but tinged with an accent no one could quite place. His Spanish, which he spoke to the Dominican who worked the counter at JoJo Burger, was much better, but still there was that accent. The girls at the boulangerie decided he was an Australian, but the boys at JoJo Burger reckoned he was an Afrikaner. They were all over the Caribbean, the Afrikaners. Decent folk for the most part, but a few of them had business interests that were less than legal.
His days, while shapeless, seemed not entirely without purpose. He took his breakfast at the boulangerie, he stopped by the newsstand in Saint-Jean to collect a stack of day-old English and American papers, he did his rigorous exercises on the beach, he read his dense volumes of literature and history with a bucket hat pulled low over his eyes. And once he rented a whaler and spent the afternoon snorkeling on the islet of Tortu. But his idleness appeared forced rather than voluntary. He seemed like a wounded soldier longing to return to the battlefield, an exile dreaming of his lost homeland, wherever that homeland might be.
According to Jean-Marc, a customs officer at the airport, he had arrived on a flight from Guadeloupe in possession of a valid Venezuelan passport bearing the peculiar name Colin Hernandez. It seemed he was the product of a brief marriage between an Anglo-Irish mother and a Spanish father. The mother had fancied herself a poet; the father had done something shady with money. Colin had loathed the old man, but he spoke of the mother as though canonization were a mere formality. He carried her photograph in his billfold. The towheaded boy on her lap didn’t look much like Colin, but time was like that.
The passport listed his age at thirty-eight, which seemed about right, and his occupation as “businessman,” which could mean just about anything. The girls from the boulangerie reckoned he was a writer in search of inspiration. How else to explain the fact that he was almost never without a book? But the girls from the market conjured up a wild theory, wholly unsupported, that he had murdered a man on Guadeloupe and was hiding out on Saint Barthélemy until the storm had passed. The Dominican from JoJo Burger, who was in hiding himself, found the hypothesis laughable. Colin Hernandez, he declared, was just another shiftless layabout living off the trust fund of a father he hated. He would stay until he grew bored, or until his finances grew thin. Then he would fly off to somewhere else, and within a day or two they would struggle to recall his name.
Finally, a month to the day after his arrival, there was a slight change in his routine. After taking his lunch at JoJo Burger, he went to the hair salon in Saint-Jean, and when he emerged his shaggy black mane was shorn, sculpted, and lustrously oiled. Next morning, when he appeared at the boulangerie, he was freshly shaved and dressed in khaki trousers and a crisp white shirt. He had his usual breakfast—a large bowl of café crème and a loaf of coarse country bread—and lingered over the previous day’s London Times. Then, instead of returning to his cottage, he mounted his motor scooter and sped into Gustavia. And by noon that day, it was finally clear why the man called Colin Hernandez had come to Saint Barthélemy.
He went first to the stately old Hotel Carl Gustaf, but the head chef, after learning he had no formal training, refused to grant him an interview. The owners of Maya’s turned him politely away, as did the management of the Wall House, Ocean, and La Cantina. He tried La Plage, but La Plage wasn’t interested. Neither were the Eden Rock, the Guanahani, La Crêperie, Le Jardin, or Le Grain de Sel, the lonely outpost overlooking the salt marshes of Saline. Even La Gloriette, founded by a political exile, wanted nothing to do with him.
Undeterred, he tried his luck at the undiscovered gems of the island: the airport snack bar, the Creole joint across the street, the little pizza-and-panini hut in the parking lot of L’Oasis supermarket. And it was there fortune finally smiled upon him, for he learned that the chef at Le Piment had stormed off the job after a long-simmering dispute over hours and salary. By four o’clock that afternoon, after demonstrating his skills in Le Piment’s birdhouse of a kitchen, he was gainfully employed. He worked his first shift that same evening. The reviews were universally glowing.
In fact, it did not take long for word of his culinary prowess to make its way round the little island. Le Piment, once the province of locals and habitués, was soon overflowing with a newfound clientele, all of whom sang the praises of the mysterious new chef with the peculiar Anglo-Spanish name. The Carl Gustaf tried to poach him, as did the Eden Rock, the Guanahani, and La Plage, all without success. Therefore, Reginald Ogilvy, captain of the Aurora, was in a pessimistic mood when he appeared at Le Piment without a reservation the night after the disappearance of Spider Barnes. He was forced to cool his heels for thirty minutes at the bar before finally being granted a table. He ordered three appetizers and three entrées. Then, after sampling each, he requested a brief word with the chef. Ten minutes elapsed before his wish was granted.
“Hungry?” asked the man called Colin Hernandez, looking down at the plates of food.
“Not really.”
“So why are you here?”
“I wanted to see if you were as good as everyone seems to think you are.”
Ogilvy extended his hand and introduced himself—rank and name, followed by the name of his boat. The man called Colin Hernandez raised an eyebrow quizzically.
“The Aurora is Spider Barnes’s boat, isn’t it?”
“You know Spider?”
“I think I had a drink with him once.”
“You weren’t alone.”
Ogilvy took stock of the figure standing before him. He was compact, hard, formidable. To the Englishman’s sharp eye, he seemed like a man who had sailed in rough seas. His brow was dark and thick; his jaw was sturdy and resolute. It was a face, thought Ogilvy, that had been built to take a punch.
“You’re Venezuelan,” he said.
“Says who?”
“Says everyone who refused to hire you when you were looking for a job.”
Ogilvy’s eyes moved from the face to the hand resting on the back of the chair opposite. There was no evidence of tattooing, which he saw as a positive sign. Ogilvy regarded the modern culture of ink as a form of self-mutilation.
“Do you drink?” he asked.
“Not like Spider.”
“Married?”
“Only once.”
“Children?”
“God, no.”
“Vices?”
“Coltrane and Monk.”
“Ever killed anyone?”
“Not that I can recall.”
He said this with a smile. Reginald Ogilvy smiled in return.
“I’m wondering whether I might tempt you away from all this,” he said, glancing around the modest open-air dining room. “I’m prepared to pay you a generous salary. And when we’re not at sea, you’ll have plenty of free time to do whatever it is you like to do when you’re not cooking.”
“How generous?”
“Two thousand a week.”
“How much was Spider making?”
“Three,” replied Ogilvy after a moment’s hesitation. “But Spider was with me for two seasons.”
“He’s not with you now, is he?”
Ogilvy made a show of deliberation. “Three it is,” he said. “But I need you to start right away.”
“When do you sail?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“In that case,” said the man called Colin Hernandez, “I suppose you’ll have to pay me four.”
Reginald Ogilvy, captain of the Aurora, surveyed the plates of food before rising gravely to his feet. “Eight o’clock,” he said. “Don’t be late.”
François, the quick-tempered Marseilles-born owner of Le Piment, did not take the news well. There was a string of affronts delivered in the rapid-fire patois of the south. There were promises of reprisals. And then there was the bottle of rather good Bordeaux, empty, that shattered into a thousand shards of emerald when hurled against the wall of the tiny kitchen. Later, François would deny he had been aiming at his departing chef. But Isabelle, a waitress who witnessed the incident, would call into question his version of events. François, she swore, had flung the bottle dagger-like directly at the head of Monsieur Hernandez. And Monsieur Hernandez, she recalled, had evaded the object with a movement that was so small and swift it occurred in the blink of an eye. Afterward, he had glared coldly at François for a long moment as though deciding how best to break his neck. Then, calmly, he had removed his spotless white kitchen apron and climbed aboard his motor scooter.
He spent the remainder of that night on the veranda of his cottage, reading by the light of his hurricane lamp. And at the top of every hour, he lowered his book and listened to the news on the BBC as the waves slapped and receded on the beach and the palm fronds hissed in the night wind. In the morning, after an invigorating swim in the sea, he showered, dressed, and packed his belongings into his canvas duffel: his clothing, his books, his radio. In addition, he packed two items that had been left for him on the islet of Tortu: a Stechkin 9mm pistol with a silencer screwed into the barrel, and a rectangular parcel, twelve inches by twenty. The parcel weighed sixteen pounds exactly. He placed it in the center of the duffel so it would remain balanced when carried.
He left the beach at Lorient for the last time at half past seven and, with the duffel resting upon his knees, rode into Gustavia. The Aurora sparkled at the edge of the harbor. He boarded at ten minutes to eight and was shown to his cabin by his sous-chef, a thin English girl with the unlikely name Amelia List. He stowed his possessions in the cupboard—including the Stechkin pistol and the sixteen-pound parcel—and dressed in the chef’s trousers and tunic that had been laid upon his berth. Amelia List was waiting in the corridor when he emerged. She escorted him to the galley and led him on a tour of the dry goods pantry, the walk-in refrigerator, and the storeroom filled with wine. It was there, in the cool darkness, that he had his first sexual thought about the English girl in the crisp white uniform. He did nothing to dispel it. He had been celibate for so many months that he could scarcely recall what it felt like to touch a woman’s hair or caress the flesh of a defenseless breast.
A few minutes before ten o’clock there came an announcement over the ship’s intercom instructing all members of the crew to report to the afterdeck. The man called Colin Hernandez followed Amelia List outside and was standing next to her when two black Range Rovers braked to a halt at Aurora’s stern. From the first emerged two giggling sunburned girls and a pale florid-faced man in his forties who was holding the straps of a pink beach bag in one hand and the neck of an open bottle of champagne in the other. Two athletic-looking men spilled from the second Rover, followed a moment later by a woman who looked to be suffering from a case of terminal melancholia. She wore a peach-colored dress that left the impression of partial nudity, a wide-brimmed hat that shadowed her slender shoulders, and large opaque sunglasses that concealed much of her porcelain face. Even so, she was instantly recognizable. Her profile betrayed her, the profile so admired by the fashion photographers and the paparazzi who stalked her every move. There were no paparazzi present that morning. For once she had eluded them.
She stepped aboard the Aurora as though she were stepping over an open grave and slipped past the assembled crew without a word or glance, passing so close to the man called Colin Hernandez he had to suppress an urge to touch her to make certain she was real and not a hologram. Five minutes later the Aurora eased into the harbor, and by noon the enchanted island of Saint Barthélemy was a lump of brown-green on the horizon. Stretched topless upon the foredeck, drink in hand, her flawless skin baking in the sun, was the most famous woman in the world. And one deck below, preparing an appetizer of tuna tartare, cucumber, and pineapple, was the man who was going to kill her.
2 (#ulink_9b9f5466-fe88-57ef-97fd-da168e26b386)
OFF THE LEEWARD ISLANDS (#ulink_9b9f5466-fe88-57ef-97fd-da168e26b386)
EVERYONE KNEW THE STORY. AND even those who pretended not to care, or expressed disdain over her worldwide cult of devotion, knew every sordid detail. She was the immensely shy and beautiful middle-class girl from Kent who had managed to find her way to Cambridge, and he was the handsome and slightly older future king of England. They had met at a campus debate having something to do with the environment, and, according to the legend, the future king was instantly smitten. A lengthy courtship followed, quiet and discreet. The girl was vetted by the future king’s people; the future king, by hers. Finally, one of the naughtier tabloids managed to snap a photograph of the couple leaving the Duke of Rutland’s annual summer ball at Belvoir Castle. Buckingham Palace released a bland piece of paper confirming the obvious, that the future king and the middle-class girl with no aristocratic blood in her veins were dating. Then, a month later, with the tabloids ablaze with rumors and speculation, the palace announced that the middle-class girl and the future king planned to marry.
They were wed at St. Paul’s Cathedral on a morning in June when the skies of southern England poured with black rain. Later, when things fell apart, there were some in the British press who would write that they were doomed from the start. The girl, by temperament and breeding, was wholly unsuited for life in the royal fishbowl; and the future king, for all the same reasons, was equally unsuited for marriage. He had many lovers, too many to count, and the girl punished him by taking one of her security guards to her bed. The future king, when told of the affair, banished the guard to a lonely outpost in Scotland. Distraught, the girl attempted suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping tablets and was rushed to the emergency room at St. Anne’s Hospital. Buckingham Palace announced she was suffering from dehydration caused by a bout of influenza. When asked to explain why her husband had not visited her in the hospital, the palace murmured something about a scheduling conflict. The statement raised far more questions than it answered.
Upon her release, it became obvious to royal watchers that all was not well with the future king’s beautiful wife. Even so, she performed her marital duty by bearing him two heirs, a son and a daughter, both delivered after abbreviated and difficult pregnancies. The king showed his gratitude by returning to the bed of a woman to whom he had once proposed marriage, and the princess retaliated by attaining a global celebrity that eclipsed that of the king’s sainted mother. She traveled the world in support of noble causes, a horde of reporters and photographers hanging on her every word and movement, and yet all the while no one seemed to notice she was sliding toward something like madness. Finally, with her blessing and quiet assistance, it all came spilling onto the pages of a tell-all book: her husband’s infidelities, the bouts of depression, the suicide attempts, the eating disorder brought on by her constant exposure to the press and public. The future king, incensed, engineered a stream of retaliatory press leaks about his wife’s erratic behavior. Then came the coup de grâce, the recording of a passionate telephone conversation between the princess and her favorite lover. By then, the Queen had had enough. With the monarchy in jeopardy, she asked the couple to divorce as quickly as possible. They did so a month later. Buckingham Palace, without a trace of irony, issued a statement declaring the termination of the royal marriage “amicable.”
The princess was permitted to keep her apartments in Kensington Palace but was stripped of the title Her Royal Highness. The Queen offered her a second-tier honorific but she refused it, preferring instead to be called by her given name. She even shed her SO14 bodyguards, for she viewed them more as spies than protectors of her security. The palace quietly kept tabs on her movements and associations, as did British intelligence, which viewed her more as a nuisance than a threat to the realm.
In public, she was the radiant face of global compassion. But behind closed doors she drank too much and surrounded herself with an entourage that one royal adviser described as “Eurorubbish.” On this trip, however, her retinue of companions was smaller than usual. The two sunburned women were childhood friends; the man who boarded Aurora with an open bottle of champagne was Simon Hastings-Clarke, the grotesquely wealthy viscount who supported her in the style to which she had become accustomed. It was Hastings-Clarke who flew her privately around the world on his fleet of jets, and Hastings-Clarke who footed the bill for her bodyguards. The two men who accompanied them to the Caribbean were employed by a private security firm in London. Before leaving Gustavia, they had subjected the Aurora and its crew to only a cursory inspection. Of the man called Colin Hernandez, they asked a single question: “What are we having for lunch?”
At the request of the former princess, it was a light buffet, though neither she nor her companions seemed terribly interested in it. They drank a great deal that afternoon, roasting their bodies in the harsh sun of the foredeck, until a rainstorm drove them laughing to their staterooms. They remained there until nine that evening, when they emerged dressed and groomed as though for a garden party in Somerset. They had cocktails and canapés on the afterdeck and then repaired to the main salon for dinner: salad with truffle-infused vinaigrette, followed by lobster risotto and rack of lamb with artichoke, lemon forte, courgette, and piment d’argile. The former princess and her companions declared the meal magnificent and demanded an appearance by the chef. When finally he appeared, they serenaded him with childlike applause.
“What will you make us tomorrow night?” asked the former princess.
“It’s a surprise,” he replied in his peculiar accent.
“Oh, good,” she said, fixing him with the same smile he had seen on countless magazine covers. “I do like surprises.”
They were a small crew, eight in all, and it was the responsibility of the chef and his assistant to see to the china, the stemware, the silver, the pots and pans, and the cooking utensils. They stood side by side at the basin long after the former princess and her companions had turned in, their hands occasionally touching beneath the warm soapy water, her bony hip pressing against his thigh. And once, as they squeezed past one another in the linen cabinet, her firm nipples traced two lines across his back, sending a charge of electricity and blood to his groin. They retired to their cabins alone, but a few minutes later he heard a butterfly tap at his door. She took him without a sound. It was like performing the act of love with a mute.
“Maybe this was a mistake,” she whispered into his ear when they had finished.
“Why would you say that?”
“Because we’re going to be working together for a long time.”
“Not so long.”
“You’re not planning to stay?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
He said nothing more. She laid her head on his chest and closed her eyes.
“You can’t stay here,” he said.
“I know,” she answered drowsily. “Just for a little while.”
He lay motionless for a long time after, Amelia List sleeping on his chest, the Aurora rising and falling beneath him, his mind working through the details of what was to come. Finally, at three o’clock, he eased from the berth and padded naked across the cabin to the cupboard. Soundlessly, he dressed in black trousers, a woolen sweater, and a dark waterproof coat. Then he removed the wrapper from the parcel—the parcel measuring twelve inches by twenty and weighing sixteen pounds precisely—and engaged the power source and the timer on the detonator. He returned the parcel to the cupboard and was reaching for the Stechkin pistol when he heard the girl stir behind him. He turned slowly and stared at her in the darkness.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Go back to sleep.”
“I saw a red light.”
“It was my radio.”
“Why are you listening to the radio at three in the morning?”
Before he could answer, the bedside lamp flared. Her eyes flashed across his dark clothing before settling on the silenced gun that was still in his hand. She opened her mouth to scream, but he placed his palm heavily across her face before any sound could escape. As she struggled to free herself from his grasp, he whispered soothingly into her ear. “Don’t worry, my love,” he was saying. “It will only hurt a little.”
Her eyes widened in terror. Then he twisted her head violently to the left, severing her spinal cord, and held her gently as she died.
It was not the custom of Reginald Ogilvy to stand the lonely hours of the middle watch, but concern for the safety of his famous passenger drove him to the bridge of the Aurora early that morning. He was checking the weather forecast on an onboard computer, a fresh cup of coffee in his hand, when the man called Colin Hernandez appeared at the top of the companionway, dressed entirely in black. Ogilvy looked up sharply and asked, “What are you doing here?” But he received no reply other than two rounds from the silenced Stechkin that pierced the front of his uniform and mauled his heart.
The coffee cup clattered loudly to the floor; Ogilvy, instantly dead, thudded heavily next to it. His killer moved calmly to the console, made a slight adjustment to the ship’s heading, and retreated down the companionway. The main deck was deserted, no other crew members on duty. He lowered one of the Zodiac dinghies into the black sea, clambered aboard, and released the line.
Adrift, he bobbed beneath a canopy of diamond-white stars, watching the Aurora slicing eastward toward the shipping lanes of the Atlantic, pilotless, a ghost ship. He checked the luminous face of his wristwatch. Then, when the dial read zero, he looked up again. Fifteen additional seconds elapsed, enough time for him to consider the remote possibility that the bomb was somehow defective. Finally, there was a flash on the horizon—the blinding white flash of the high explosive, followed by the orange-yellow of the secondary explosions and fire.
The sound was like the rumble of distant thunder. Afterward, there was only the sea beating against the side of the Zodiac, and the wind. With the press of a button, he fired the outboard and watched as the Aurora started her journey to the bottom. Then he turned the Zodiac to the west and opened the throttle.
3 (#ulink_95b842e5-1214-52f5-96ec-a958d9fc4ca2)
THE CARIBBEAN–LONDON (#ulink_95b842e5-1214-52f5-96ec-a958d9fc4ca2)
THE FIRST INDICATION OF TROUBLE came when Pegasus Global Charters of Nassau reported that a routine message to one of its vessels, the 154-foot luxury motor yacht Aurora, had received no reply. The Pegasus operations center immediately requested assistance from all commercial ships and pleasure craft in the vicinity of the Leeward Islands, and within minutes the crew of a Liberian-registered oil tanker reported that they had seen an unusual flash of light in the area at approximately 3:45 that morning. Shortly thereafter the crew of a container ship spotted one of the Aurora’s dinghies floating empty and adrift approximately one hundred miles south-southeast of Gustavia. Simultaneously, a private sailing vessel encountered life preservers and other floating debris a few miles to the west. Fearing the worst, Pegasus management phoned the British High Commission in Kingston and informed the honorary consul that the Aurora was missing and presumed lost. Management then sent along a copy of the passenger manifest, which included the given name of the former princess. “Tell me it isn’t her,” the honorary consul said incredulously, but Pegasus management confirmed that the passenger was indeed the former wife of the future king. The consul immediately rang his superiors at the Foreign Office in London, and the superiors determined the situation was of sufficient gravity to wake Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster, at which point the crisis truly began.
The prime minister broke the news to the future king by telephone at half past one, but waited until nine to inform the British people and the world. Standing outside the black door of 10 Downing Street, his face grim, he recounted the facts as they were known at that time. The former wife of the future king had traveled to the Caribbean in the company of Simon Hastings-Clarke and two other longtime friends. On the holiday island of Saint Barthélemy, the party had boarded the luxury motor yacht Aurora for a planned one-week cruise. All contact with the vessel had been lost; surface debris had been discovered. “We hope and pray the princess will be found alive,” the prime minister said solemnly. “But we must prepare ourselves for the very worst.”
The first day of the search produced no remains or survivors. Nor did the second day or the third. After conferring with the Queen, Prime Minister Lancaster announced that his government was operating under the assumption that the beloved princess was dead. In the Caribbean, the search teams focused their efforts on finding wreckage rather than the bodies. It would not be a long search. In fact, just forty-eight hours later, an unmanned submersible operated by the French navy discovered the Aurora lying beneath two thousand feet of seawater. One expert who viewed the video images said it was clear the vessel had suffered some type of cataclysmic failure, almost certainly an explosion. “The question is,” he said, “was it an accident, or was it intentional?”
A majority of the country—reliable polling said it was so—refused to believe she was actually gone. They hung their hopes on the fact that only one of the Aurora’s two Zodiac dinghies had been found. Surely, they argued, she was adrift on the open seas or had washed ashore on a deserted island. One disreputable Web site went so far as to report that she had been spotted on Montserrat. Another said she was living quietly by the sea in Dorset. Conspiracy theorists of every stripe concocted lurid tales of a plot to kill the princess that was conceived by the Queen’s Privy Council and carried out by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6. Pressure mounted on its chief, Graham Seymour, to issue a full-throated denial of the allegations, but he steadfastly refused. “These aren’t allegations,” he told the foreign secretary during a tense meeting at the service’s vast riverfront headquarters. “These are fairy tales spun by people with mental disorders, and I won’t dignify them with a response.”
Privately, however, Seymour had already reached the conclusion that the explosion aboard the Aurora was not an accident. So, too, had his counterpart at the DGSE, the highly capable French intelligence service. A French analysis of the wreckage video had determined that the Aurora was blown apart by a bomb detonated belowdecks. But who had smuggled the device aboard the vessel? And who had primed the detonator? The DGSE’s prime suspect was the man who had been hired to replace the Aurora’s missing head chef on the evening before the yacht left port. The French forwarded to MI6 a grainy video of his arrival at Gustavia’s airport, along with a few poor-quality still photos captured by private storefront security cameras. They showed a man who did not care to have his picture taken. “He doesn’t strike me as the sort of chap who would go down with the ship,” Seymour told a gathering of his senior staff. “He’s out there somewhere. Find out who he really is and where he’s hiding out, preferably before the Frogs.”
He was a whisper in a half-lit chapel, a loose thread at the hem of a discarded garment. They ran the photographs through the computers. And when the computers failed to find a match, they searched for him the old-fashioned way, with shoe leather and envelopes filled with money—American money, of course, for in the nether regions of the espionage world, dollars remained the reserve currency. MI6’s man in Caracas could find no trace of him. Nor could he find any hint of an Anglo-Irish mother with a poetic heart, or of a Spanish-businessman father. The address on his passport turned out to be a derelict lot in a Caracas slum; his last known phone number was long deceased. A paid asset inside the Venezuelan secret police said he’d heard a rumor about a link to Castro, but a source close to Cuban intelligence murmured something about the Colombian cartels. “Maybe once,” said an incorruptible policeman in Bogotá, “but he parted company with the drug lords a long time ago. The last thing I heard, he was living in Panama with one of Noriega’s former mistresses. He had several million stashed in a dirty Panamanian bank and a beach condo on the Playa Farallón.” The former mistress denied all knowledge of him, and the manager of the bank in question, after accepting a bribe of ten thousand dollars, could find no record of any accounts bearing his name. As for the beach condo in Farallón, a neighbor could recall little of his appearance, only his voice. “He spoke with a peculiar accent,” he said. “It sounded as though he was from Australia. Or was it South Africa?”
Graham Seymour monitored the search for the elusive suspect from the comfort of his office, the finest office in all spydom, with its English garden of an atrium, its enormous mahogany desk used by all the chiefs who had come before him, its towering windows overlooking the river Thames, and its stately old grandfather clock constructed by none other than Sir Mansfield Smith Cumming, the first “C” of the British Secret Service. The splendor of his surroundings made Seymour restless. In his distant past, he had been a field man of some repute—not for MI6 but for MI5, Britain’s less glamorous internal security service, where he had served with distinction before making the short journey from Thames House to Vauxhall Cross. There were some in MI6 who resented the appointment of an outsider, but most saw “the crossing,” as it became known in the trade, as a sort of homecoming. Seymour’s father had been a legendary MI6 officer, a deceiver of the Nazis, a shaper of events in the Middle East. And now his son, in the prime of life, sat behind the desk before which Seymour the Elder had stood, cap in hand.
With power, however, there often comes a feeling of helplessness, and Seymour, the espiocrat, the boardroom spy, soon fell victim to it. As the search ground futilely on, and as pressure from Downing Street and the palace mounted, his mood grew brittle. He kept a photo of the target on his desk, next to the Victorian inkwell and the Parker fountain pen he used to mark his documents with his personal cipher. Something about the face was familiar. Seymour suspected that somewhere—on another battlefield, in another land—their paths had crossed. It didn’t matter that the service databases said it wasn’t so. Seymour trusted his own memory over the memory of any government computer.
And so, as the field hands chased down false leads and dug dry wells, Seymour conducted a search of his own from his gilded cage atop Vauxhall Cross. He began by scouring his prodigious memory, and when it failed him, he requested access to a stack of his old MI5 case files and searched those, too. Again he found no trace of his quarry. Finally, on the morning of the tenth day, the console telephone on Seymour’s desk purred sedately. The distinctive ringtone told him the caller was Uzi Navot, the chief of Israel’s vaunted secret intelligence service. Seymour hesitated, then cautiously lifted the receiver to his ear. As usual, the Israeli spymaster didn’t bother with an exchange of pleasantries.
“I think we might have found the man you’re looking for.”
“Who is he?”
“An old friend.”
“Of yours or ours?”
“Yours,” said the Israeli. “We don’t have any friends.”
“Can you tell me his name?”
“Not on the phone.”
“How soon can you be in London?”
The line went dead.
4 (#ulink_200fb4fa-4389-5530-a1bc-eb270d6bd805)
VAUXHALL CROSS, LONDON (#ulink_200fb4fa-4389-5530-a1bc-eb270d6bd805)
UZI NAVOT ARRIVED AT VAUXHALL CROSS shortly before eleven that evening and was fired into the executive suite in a pneumatic tube of an elevator. He wore a gray suit that fit him tightly through his massive shoulders, a white shirt that lay open against his thick neck, and rimless spectacles that pinched the bridge of his pugilist’s nose. At first glance, few assumed Navot to be an Israeli or even a Jew, a trait that had served him well during his career. Once upon a time he had been a katsa, the term used by his service to describe undercover field operatives. Armed with an array of languages and a pile of false passports, Navot had penetrated terror networks and recruited a chain of spies and informants scattered around the world. In London he had been known as Clyde Bridges, the European marketing director for an obscure business software firm. He had run several successful operations on British soil at a time when it was Seymour’s responsibility to prevent such activity. Seymour held no grudge, for such was the nature of relationships between spies: adversaries one day, allies the next.
A frequent visitor to Vauxhall Cross, Navot did not remark on the beauty of Seymour’s grand office. Nor did he engage in the usual round of professional gossip that preceded most encounters between inhabitants of the secret world. Seymour knew the reason for the Israeli’s taciturn mood. Navot’s first term as chief was nearing its end, and his prime minister had asked him to step aside for another man, a legendary officer with whom Seymour had worked on numerous occasions. There was talk that the legend had struck a deal to retain Navot’s services. It was unorthodox, allowing one’s predecessor to remain on the premises, but the legend rarely concerned himself with adherence to orthodoxy. His willingness to take chances was his greatest strength—and sometimes, thought Seymour, his undoing.
Dangling from Navot’s powerful right hand was a stainless-steel attaché case with combination locks. From it he removed a slender file folder, which he placed on the mahogany desk. Inside was a document, one page in length; the Israelis prided themselves on the brevity of their cables. Seymour read the subject line. Then he glanced at the photograph lying next to his inkwell and swore softly. On the opposite side of the imposing desk, Uzi Navot permitted himself a brief smile. It wasn’t often that one succeeded in telling the director-general of MI6 something he didn’t already know.
“Who’s the source of the information?” asked Seymour.
“It’s possible he was an Iranian,” replied Navot vaguely.
“Does MI6 have regular access to his product?”
“No,” answered Navot. “He’s ours exclusively.”
MI6, the CIA, and Israeli intelligence had worked closely for more than a decade to delay the Iranian march toward a nuclear weapon. The three services had operated jointly against the Iranian nuclear supply chain and shared vast amounts of technical data and intelligence. It was agreed that the Israelis had the best human sources in Tehran, and, much to the annoyance of the Americans and the British, they protected them jealously. Judging from the wording of the report, Seymour suspected that Navot’s spy worked for VEVAK, the Iranian intelligence service. VEVAK sources were notoriously difficult to handle. Sometimes the information they traded for Western cash was genuine. And sometimes it was in the service of taqiyya, the Persian practice of displaying one intention while harboring another.
“Do you believe him?” asked Seymour.
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.” Navot paused, then added, “And something tells me you believe him, too.”
When Seymour offered no reply, Navot drew a second document from his attaché case and laid it on the desktop next to the first. “It’s a copy of a report we sent to MI6 three years ago,” he explained. “We knew about his connection to the Iranians back then. We also knew he was working with Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and anyone else who would have him.” Navot added, “Your friend isn’t terribly discriminating about the company he keeps.”
“It was before my time,” Seymour intoned.
“But now it’s your problem.” Navot pointed toward a passage near the end of the document. “As you can see, we proposed an operation to take him out of circulation. We even volunteered to do the job. And how do you suppose your predecessor responded to our generous offer?”
“Obviously, he turned it down.”
“With extreme prejudice. In fact, he told us in no uncertain terms that we weren’t to lay a finger on him. He was afraid it would open a Pandora’s box.” Navot shook his head slowly. “And now here we are.”
The room was silent except for the ticking of C’s old grandfather clock. Finally, Navot asked quietly, “Where were you that day, Graham?”
“What day?”
“The fifteenth of August, nineteen ninety-eight.”
“The day of the bombing?”
Navot nodded.
“You know damn well where I was,” Seymour answered. “I was at Five.”
“You were the head of counterterrorism.”
“Yes.”
“Which meant it was your responsibility.”
Seymour said nothing.
“What happened, Graham? How did he get through?”
“Mistakes were made. Bad mistakes. Bad enough to ruin careers, even today.” Seymour gathered up the two documents and returned them to Navot. “Did your Iranian source tell you why he did it?”
“It’s possible he’s returned to the old fight. It’s also possible he was acting at the behest of others. Either way, he needs to be dealt with, sooner rather than later.”
Seymour made no response.
“Our offer still stands, Graham.”
“What offer is that?”
“We’ll take care of him,” Navot answered. “And then we’ll bury him in a hole so deep that none of the old problems will ever make it to the surface.”
Seymour lapsed into a contemplative silence. “There’s only one person I would trust with a job like this,” he said at last.
“That might be difficult.”
“The pregnancy?”
Navot nodded.
“When is she due?”
“I’m afraid that’s classified.”
Seymour managed a brief smile. “Do you suppose he might be persuaded to take the assignment?”
“Anything’s possible,” replied Navot noncommittally. “I’d be happy to make the approach on your behalf.”
“No,” said Seymour. “I’ll do it.”
“There is one other problem,” said Navot after a moment.
“Only one?”
“He doesn’t know much about that part of the world.”
“I know someone who can serve as his guide.”
“He won’t work with someone he doesn’t know.”
“Actually, they’re very well acquainted.”
“Is he MI6?”
“No,” replied Seymour. “Not yet.”
5 (#ulink_bb86e937-fec7-5970-b7cb-ab0c0bae1d81)
FIUMICINO AIRPORT, ROME (#ulink_bb86e937-fec7-5970-b7cb-ab0c0bae1d81)
WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE MY flight is delayed?” asked Chiara.
“It could be a mechanical problem,” replied Gabriel.
“It could be,” she repeated without conviction.
They were seated in a quiet corner of a first-class departure lounge. It didn’t matter the city, thought Gabriel, they were all the same. Unread newspapers, tepid bottles of suspect pinot grigio, CNN International playing silently on a large flat-panel television. By his own calculation, Gabriel had spent one-third of his career in places like this. Unlike his wife, he was extraordinarily good at waiting.
“Go ask that pretty girl at the information desk why my flight hasn’t been called,” she said.
“I don’t want to talk to the pretty girl at the information desk.”
“Why not?”
“Because she doesn’t know anything, and she’ll simply tell me something she thinks I want to hear.”
“Why must you always be so fatalistic?”
“It prevents me from being disappointed later.”
Chiara smiled and closed her eyes; Gabriel looked at the television. A British reporter in a helmet and flak jacket was talking about the latest airstrike on Gaza. Gabriel wondered why CNN had become so enamored with British reporters. He supposed it was the accent. The news always sounded more authoritative when delivered with a British accent, even if not a word of it was true.
“What’s he saying?” asked Chiara.
“Do you really want to know?”
“It’ll help pass the time.”
Gabriel squinted to read the closed captioning. “He says an Israeli warplane attacked a school where several hundred Palestinians were sheltering from the fighting. He says at least fifteen people were killed and several dozen more seriously wounded.”
“How many were women and children?”
“All of them, apparently.”
“Was the school the real target of the air raid?”
Gabriel typed a brief message into his BlackBerry and fired it securely to King Saul Boulevard, the headquarters of Israel’s foreign intelligence service. It had a long and deliberately misleading name that had very little to do with the true nature of its work. Employees referred to it as the Office and nothing else.
“The real target,” he said, his eyes on the BlackBerry, “was a house across the street.”
“Who lives in the house?”
“Muhammad Sarkis.”
“The Muhammad Sarkis?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Is Muhammad still among the living?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What about the school?”
“It wasn’t hit. The only casualties were Sarkis and members of his family.”
“Maybe someone should tell that reporter the truth.”
“What good would it do?”
“More fatalism,” said Chiara.
“No disappointment.”
“Please find out why my flight is delayed.”
Gabriel typed another message into his BlackBerry. A moment later came the response.
“One of the Hamas rockets landed close to Ben-Gurion.”
“How close?” asked Chiara.
“Too close for comfort.”
“Do you think the pretty girl at the information desk knows my destination is under rocket fire?”
Gabriel was silent.
“Are you sure you want to go through with it?” asked Chiara.
“With what?”
“Don’t make me say it aloud.”
“Are you asking whether I still want to be the chief at a time like this?”
She nodded.
“At a time like this,” he said, watching the images of combat and explosions flickering on the screen, “I wish I could go to Gaza and fight alongside our boys.”
“I thought you hated the army.”
“I did.”
She tilted her head toward him and opened her eyes. They were the color of caramel and flecked with gold. Time had left no marks on her beautiful face. Were it not for her swollen abdomen and the band of gold on her finger, she might have been the same young girl he had first encountered a lifetime ago, in the ancient ghetto of Venice.
“Fitting, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“That the children of Gabriel Allon should be born in a time of war.”
“With a bit of luck, the war will be over by the time they’re born.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” Chiara glanced at the departure board. The status box for Flight 386 to Tel Aviv read DELAYED. “If my plane doesn’t leave soon, they’re going to be born here in Italy.”
“Not a chance.”
“What would be so wrong with that?”
“We had a plan. And we’re sticking to the plan.”
“Actually,” she said archly, “the plan was for us to return to Israel together.”
“True,” said Gabriel, smiling. “But events intervened.”
“They usually do.”
Seventy-two hours earlier, in an ordinary parish church near Lake Como, Gabriel and Chiara had discovered one of the world’s most famous stolen paintings: Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence. The badly damaged canvas was now at the Vatican, where it was awaiting restoration. It was Gabriel’s intention to conduct the early stages himself. Such was his unique combination of talents. He was an art restorer, he was a master spy and assassin, a legend who had overseen some of the greatest operations in the history of Israeli intelligence. Soon he would be a father again, and then he would be the chief. They didn’t write stories about chiefs, he thought. They wrote stories about the men whom chiefs sent into the field to do their dirty work.
“I don’t know why you’re being so stubborn about that painting,” Chiara said.
“I found it, I want to restore it.”
“Actually, we found it. But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s no possible way you can finish it before the children are born.”
“It doesn’t matter whether I can finish it or not. I just want to—”
“Leave your mark on it?”
He nodded slowly. “It might be the last painting I ever get to restore. Besides, I owe it to him.”
“Who?”
He didn’t answer; he was reading the closed captioning on the television.
“What’s he talking about now?” Chiara asked.
“The princess.”
“What about her?”
“It seems the explosion that sank the boat was an accident.”
“Do you believe it?”
“No.”
“So why would they say something like that?”
“I suppose they want to give themselves time and space.”
“For what?”
“To find the man they’re looking for.”
Chiara closed her eyes and leaned her head against his shoulder. Her dark hair, with its shimmering auburn and chestnut highlights, smelled richly of vanilla. Gabriel kissed her hair softly and inhaled its scent. Suddenly, he didn’t want her to get on the airplane alone.
“What does the departure board say about my flight?” she asked.
“Delayed.”
“Can’t you do something to speed things up?”
“You overestimate my powers.”
“False modesty doesn’t suit you, darling.”
Gabriel typed another brief message into his BlackBerry and sent it to King Saul Boulevard. A moment later the device vibrated softly with the reply.
“Well?” asked Chiara.
“Watch the board.”
Chiara opened her eyes. The status box for El Al Flight 386 still read DELAYED. Thirty seconds later it changed to BOARDING.
“Too bad you can’t stop the war so easily,” Chiara said.
“Only Hamas can stop the war.”
She gathered up her carry-on bag and a stack of glossy magazines and rose carefully to her feet. “Be a good boy,” she said. “And if someone asks you for a favor, remember those three lovely words.”
“Find someone else.”
Chiara smiled. Then she kissed Gabriel with surprising urgency.
“Come home, Gabriel.”
“Soon.”
“No,” she said. “Come home now.”
“You’d better hurry, Chiara. Otherwise, you’ll miss your flight.”
She kissed him one last time. Then she turned away without another word and boarded the plane.
Gabriel waited until Chiara’s flight was safely airborne before leaving the terminal and making his way to Fiumicino’s chaotic parking garage. His anonymous German sedan was at the far end of the third deck, the front end facing out, lest he had reason to flee the garage in a hurry. As always, he searched the undercarriage for evidence of a concealed explosive before sliding behind the wheel and starting the engine. An Italian pop song blasted from the radio, one of those silly tunes Chiara was always singing to herself when she thought no one else was listening. Gabriel switched to the BBC, but it was filled with news about the war so he lowered the volume. There would be time enough for war later, he thought. For the next few weeks there would only be the Caravaggio.
He crossed the Tiber over the Ponte Cavour and made his way to the Via Gregoriana. The old Office safe flat was at the far end of the street, near the top of the Spanish Steps. He squeezed the sedan into an empty spot along the curb and retrieved his Beretta 9mm pistol from the glove box before climbing out. The chill night air smelled of frying garlic and faintly of wet leaves, the smell of Rome in autumn. Something about it always made Gabriel think of death.
He walked past the entrance of his building, past the awnings of the Hassler Villa Medici Hotel, to the Church of the Trinità dei Monti. A moment later, after determining he was not being followed, he returned to his apartment building. A single energy-efficient bulb burned weakly in the foyer; he moved through its sphere of light and climbed the darkened staircase. As he stepped onto the third-floor landing, he froze. The door of the flat was ajar, and from within came the sound of drawers opening and closing. Calmly, he drew the Beretta from the small of his back and used the barrel to slowly push open the door. At first, he could see no sign of the intruder. Then the door yielded another inch and he glimpsed Graham Seymour standing at the kitchen counter, an unopened bottle of Gavi in one hand and a corkscrew in the other. Gabriel slipped the gun into his coat pocket and went inside. And in his head he was thinking of three lovely words.
Find someone else …
6 (#ulink_b9be07f1-3590-54ea-93ca-6cee9e41e808)
VIA GREGORIANA, ROME (#ulink_b9be07f1-3590-54ea-93ca-6cee9e41e808)
PERHAPS YOU’D BETTER SEE TO this, Gabriel. Otherwise, someone’s liable to get hurt.”
Seymour surrendered the bottle of wine and the corkscrew and leaned against the kitchen counter. He wore gray flannel trousers, a herringbone jacket, and a blue dress shirt with French cuffs. The absence of personal aides or a security detail suggested he had traveled to Rome using a pseudonymous passport. It was a bad sign. The chief of MI6 traveled clandestinely only when he had a serious problem.
“How did you get in here?” asked Gabriel.
Seymour fished a key from the pocket of his trousers. Attached was the simple black medallion so beloved by Housekeeping, the Office division that procured and managed safe properties.
“Where did you get that?”
“Uzi gave it to me yesterday in London.”
“And the code for the alarm? I suppose he gave you that, too.”
Seymour recited the eight-digit number.
“That’s a violation of Office protocol.”
“There were extenuating circumstances. Besides,” added Seymour, “after all the operations we’ve done together, I’m practically a member of the family.”
“Even family members knock before entering a room.”
“You’re one to talk.”
Gabriel removed the cork from the bottle, poured out two glasses, and handed one to Seymour. The Englishman raised his glass a fraction of an inch and said, “To fatherhood.”
“It’s bad luck to drink to children who haven’t been born yet, Graham.”
“Then what shall we drink to?”
When Gabriel offered no answer, Seymour went into the sitting room. From its picture window it was possible to see the bell tower of the church and the top of the Spanish Steps. He stood there for a moment gazing out across the rooftops as though he were admiring the rolling hills of his country estate from the terrace of his manor house. With his pewter-colored locks and sturdy jaw, Graham Seymour was the archetypal British civil servant, a man who’d been born, bred, and educated to lead. He was handsome, but not too; he was tall, but not remarkably so. He made others feel inferior, especially Americans.
“You know,” he said finally, “you really should find somewhere else to stay when you’re in Rome. The entire world knows about this safe flat, which means it isn’t a safe flat at all.”
“I like the view.”
“I can see why.”
Seymour returned his gaze to the darkened rooftops. Gabriel sensed there was something troubling him. He would get around to it eventually. He always did.
“I hear your wife left town today,” he said at last.
“What other privileged information did the chief of my service share with you?”
“He mentioned something about a painting.”
“It’s not just any painting, Graham. It’s the—”
“Caravaggio,” said Seymour, finishing Gabriel’s sentence for him. Then he smiled and added, “You do have a knack for finding things, don’t you?”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“I suppose it was.”
Seymour drank. Gabriel asked why Uzi Navot had come to London.
“He had a piece of intelligence he wanted me to see. I have to admit,” Seymour added, “he seemed in good spirits for a man in his position.”
“What position is that?”
“Everyone in the business knows Uzi is on his way out,” answered Seymour. “And he’s leaving behind a terrible mess. The entire Middle East is in flames, and it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”
“Uzi wasn’t the one who made the mess.”
“No,” agreed Seymour, “the Americans did that. The president and his advisers were too quick to part ways with the Arab strongmen. Now the president’s confronted with a world gone mad, and he doesn’t have a clue as to what to do about it.”
“And if you were advising the president, Graham?”
“I’d tell him to resurrect the strongmen. It worked before, it can work again.”
“All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men.”
“Your point?”
“The old order is broken, and it can’t be put back together. Besides,” added Gabriel, “the old order is what brought us Bin Laden and the jihadists in the first place.”
“And when the jihadists try to evict the Jewish state from the House of Islam?”
“They are trying, Graham. And in case you haven’t noticed, they don’t have much use for the United Kingdom, either. Like it or not, we’re in this together.”
Gabriel’s BlackBerry vibrated. He looked at the screen and frowned.
“What is it?” asked Seymour.
“Another cease-fire.”
“How long will this one last?”
“I suppose until Hamas decides to break it.” Gabriel placed the BlackBerry on the coffee table and regarded Seymour curiously. “You were about to tell me what you’re doing in my apartment.”
“I have a problem.”
“What’s his name?”
“Quinn,” answered Seymour. “Eamon Quinn.”
Gabriel ran the name through the database of his memory but found no match. “Irish?” he asked.
Seymour nodded.
“Republican?”
“Of the worst kind.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“A long time ago, I made a mistake and people died.”
“And Quinn was responsible?”
“Quinn lit the fuse, but ultimately I was responsible. That’s the wonderful thing about our business. Our mistakes always come back to haunt us, and eventually all debts come due.” Seymour raised his glass toward Gabriel. “Can we drink to that?”
7 (#ulink_2d81aa12-fb0a-5363-a72f-5e019ea95110)
VIA GREGORIANA, ROME (#ulink_2d81aa12-fb0a-5363-a72f-5e019ea95110)
THE SKIES HAD BEEN THREATENING all afternoon. Finally, at half past ten, a torrential downpour briefly turned the Via Gregoriana into a Venetian canal. Graham Seymour stood at the window watching fat gobbets of rain hammering against the terrace, but in his thoughts it was the hopeful summer of 1998. The Soviet Union was a memory. The economies of Europe and America were roaring. The jihadists of al-Qaeda were the stuff of white papers and terminally boring seminars about future threats. “We fooled ourselves into thinking we had reached the end of history,” he was saying. “There were some in Parliament who actually proposed disbanding the Security Service and MI6 and burning us all at the stake.” He glanced over his shoulder. “They were days of wine and roses. They were days of delusion.”
“Not for me, Graham. I was out of the business at the time.”
“I remember.” Seymour turned away from Gabriel and watched the rain beating against the glass. “You were living in Cornwall then, weren’t you? In that little cottage on the Helford River. Your first wife was at the psychiatric hospital in Stafford, and you were supporting her by cleaning paintings for Julian Isherwood. And there was that boy who lived in the cottage next door. His name escapes me.”
“Peel,” said Gabriel. “His name was Timothy Peel.”
“Ah, yes, young Master Peel. We could never figure out why you were spending so much time with him. And then we realized he was exactly the same age as the son you lost to the bomb in Vienna.”
“I thought we were talking about you, Graham.”
“We are,” replied Seymour.
He then reminded Gabriel, needlessly, that in the summer of 1998 he was the chief of counterterrorism at MI5. As such, he was responsible for protecting the British homeland from the terrorists of the Irish Republican Army. And yet even in Ulster, scene of a centuries-old conflict between Protestants and Catholics, there were signs of hope. The voters of Northern Ireland had ratified the Good Friday peace accords, and the Provisional IRA was adhering to the terms of the cease-fire. Only the Real IRA, a small band of hard-line dissidents, carried on the armed struggle. Its leader was Michael McKevitt, the former quartermaster general of the IRA. His common-law wife, Bernadette Sands-McKevitt, ran the political wing: the 32 County Sovereignty Movement. She was the sister of Bobby Sands, the Provisional IRA member who starved himself to death in the Maze prison in 1981.
“And then,” said Seymour, “there was Eamon Quinn. Quinn planned the operations. Quinn built the bombs. Unfortunately, he was good. Very good.”
A heavy thunderclap shook the building. Seymour gave an involuntary flinch before continuing.
“Quinn had a certain genius for building highly effective bombs and delivering them to their targets. But what he didn’t know,” Seymour added, “was that I had an agent watching over his shoulder.”
“How long was he there?”
“My agent was a woman,” answered Seymour. “And she was there from the beginning.”
Managing the agent and her intelligence, Seymour continued, proved to be a delicate balancing act. Because the agent was highly placed within the organization, she often had advance knowledge of attacks, including the target, the time, and the size of the bomb.
“What were we to do?” asked Seymour. “Disrupt the attacks and put the agent at risk? Or allow the attacks to go forward and try to make sure no one gets killed in the process?”
“The latter,” replied Gabriel.
“Spoken like a true spy.”
“We’re not policemen, Graham.”
“Thank God for that.”
For the most part, said Seymour, the strategy worked. Several large car bombs were defused, and several others exploded with minimal casualties, though one virtually leveled the High Street of Portadown, a loyalist stronghold, in February 1998. Then, six months later, MI5’s spy reported the group was plotting a major attack. Something big, she warned. Something that would blow the Good Friday peace process to bits.
“What were we supposed to do?” asked Seymour.
Outside, the sky exploded with lightning. Seymour emptied his glass and told Gabriel the rest of it.
On the evening of August 13, 1998, a maroon Vauxhall Cavalier, registration number 91 DL 2554, vanished from a housing estate in Carrickmacross, in the Republic of Ireland. It was driven to an isolated farm along the border and fitted with a set of false Northern Ireland plates. Then Quinn fitted it with the bomb: five hundred pounds of fertilizer, a machine-tooled booster rod filled with high explosive, a detonator, a power source hidden in a plastic food container, an arming switch in the glove box. On the morning of Sunday, August 15, he drove the car across the border to Omagh and parked it outside the S.D. Kells department store on Lower Market Street.
“Obviously,” said Seymour, “Quinn didn’t deliver the bomb alone. There was another man in the Vauxhall, two more in a scout car, and another man who drove the getaway car. They communicated by cellular phone. And we were listening to every word.”
“The Security Service?”
“No,” replied Seymour. “Our ability to monitor phone calls didn’t extend beyond the borders of the United Kingdom. The Omagh plot originated in the Irish Republic, so we had to rely on GCHQ to do the eavesdropping for us.”
The Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, was Britain’s version of the NSA. At 2:20 p.m. it intercepted a call from a man who sounded like Eamon Quinn. He spoke six words: “The bricks are in the wall.” MI5 knew from past experience that the phrase meant the bomb was in place. Twelve minutes later Ulster Television received an anonymous telephone warning: “There’s a bomb, courthouse, Omagh, main street, five hundred pounds, explosion in thirty minutes.” The Royal Ulster Constabulary began evacuating the streets around Omagh’s courthouse and frantically looking for the bomb. What they didn’t realize was that they were looking in the wrong place.
“The telephone warning was incorrect,” said Gabriel.
Seymour nodded slowly. “The Vauxhall wasn’t anywhere near the courthouse. It was several hundred yards farther down Lower Market Street. When the RUC began the evacuation, they unwittingly drove people toward the bomb rather than away from it.” Seymour paused, then added, “But that’s exactly what Quinn wanted. He wanted people to die, so he deliberately parked the car in the wrong place. He double-crossed his own organization.”
At ten minutes past three the bomb detonated. Twenty-nine people were killed, another two hundred were wounded. It was the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of the conflict. So powerful was the revulsion that the Real IRA felt compelled to issue an apology. Somehow, the peace process held. After thirty years of blood and bombs, the people of Northern Ireland had finally had enough.
“And then the press and the families of the victims started to ask uncomfortable questions,” said Seymour. “How did the Real IRA manage to plant a bomb in the middle of Omagh without the knowledge of the police and the security services? And why were there no arrests?”
“What did you do?”
“We did what we always do. We closed ranks, burned our files, and waited for the storm to pass.”
Seymour rose, carried his glass into the kitchen, and removed the bottle of Gavi from the refrigerator. “Do you have anything stronger than this?”
“Like what?”
“Something distilled.”
“I’d rather drink acetone than distilled spirits.”
“Acetone with a twist might do the trick about now.” Seymour dumped an inch of wine into his glass and placed the bottle on the counter.
“What happened to Quinn after Omagh?”
“Quinn went into private practice. Quinn went international.”
“What kind of work did he do?”
“The usual,” replied Seymour. “Security work for the thugs and potentates, bomb-making clinics for the revolutionaries and the religiously deranged. We caught a glimpse of him every now and again, but for the most part he flew beneath our radar. Then the chief of Iranian intelligence invited him to Tehran, at which point King Saul Boulevard entered the picture.”
Seymour popped the latches on his briefcase, removed a single sheet of paper, and placed it on the coffee table. Gabriel looked at the document and frowned.
“Another violation of Office protocol.”
“What’s that?”
“Carrying a classified Office cable in an insecure briefcase.”
Gabriel picked up the document and began to read. It stated that Eamon Quinn, former member of the Real IRA, mastermind of the Omagh terrorist outrage, had been retained by Iranian intelligence to develop highly lethal roadside bombs to be used against British and American forces in Iraq. The same Eamon Quinn had performed a similar service for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In addition, he had traveled to Yemen, where he had helped al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula construct a small liquid bomb that could be slipped onto an American jetliner. He was, the report said in its concluding paragraph, one of the most dangerous men in the world and needed to be eliminated immediately.
“You should have taken Uzi up on his offer.”
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” replied Seymour. “But I wouldn’t be so glib. After all, Uzi would have probably given the job to you.”
Gabriel methodically tore the document to tiny shreds.
“That’s not good enough,” said Seymour.
“I’ll burn it later.”
“Do me a favor, and burn Eamon Quinn while you’re at it.”
Gabriel was silent for a moment. “My days in the field are over,” he said finally. “I’m a deskman now, Graham, just like you. Besides, Northern Ireland was never my neck of the woods.”
“Then I suppose we’ll have to find you a partner. Someone who knows the turf. Someone who can pass for a local if need be. Someone who actually knows Eamon Quinn personally.” Seymour paused, then added, “Do you happen to know anyone who fits that description?”
“No,” said Gabriel pointedly.
“I do,” replied Seymour. “But there’s one small problem.”
“What’s that?”
Seymour smiled and said, “He’s dead.”
8 (#ulink_ec0067c5-5ff4-5ef3-8cce-7c00ea4940f6)
VIA GREGORIANA, ROME (#ulink_ec0067c5-5ff4-5ef3-8cce-7c00ea4940f6)
OR IS HE?”
Seymour retrieved two photographs from his briefcase and placed one on the coffee table. It showed a man of medium height and build walking through passport control at Heathrow Airport.
“Recognize him?” asked Seymour.
Gabriel said nothing.
“It’s you, of course.” Seymour pointed to the time code at the bottom of the image. “It was taken last winter during the Madeline Hart affair. You slipped into the United Kingdom unannounced to do a little digging.”
“I was there, Graham. I remember it well.”
“Then you’ll also recall that you began your search for Madeline Hart on the island of Corsica, a logical starting place because that’s where she disappeared. Shortly after your arrival, you went to see a man named Anton Orsati. Don Orsati runs the island’s most powerful organized crime family, a family that specializes in murder for hire. He gave you a valuable piece of information regarding her kidnappers. He also allowed you to borrow his best assassin.” Seymour smiled. “Does any of this ring a bell?”
“Obviously, you were watching me.”
“From a discreet distance. After all, you were searching for the mistress of the British prime minister at my behest.”
“She wasn’t just his mistress, Graham. She was—”
“This Corsican assassin is an interesting fellow,” Seymour interrupted. “In truth, he’s not Corsican at all, though he certainly speaks like one. He’s an Englishman, a former member of the Special Air Service who walked off the battlefield in western Iraq in January 1991 after an incident involving friendly fire. The British military believes he’s dead. Sadly, so do his parents. But then, you already knew that.”
Seymour placed the second photograph on the coffee table. Like the first, it showed a man walking through Heathrow Airport. He was several inches taller than Gabriel, with short blond hair, skin the color of saddle leather, and square, powerful shoulders.
“It was taken on the same day as the first photo, a few minutes later. Your friend entered the country on a false French passport, one of several he has in his possession. On that particular day he was Adrien Leblanc. His real name is—”
“You’ve made your point, Graham.”
Seymour gathered up the photographs and offered them to Gabriel.
“What am I supposed to do with these?”
“Keep them as a memento of your friendship.”
Gabriel tore the photographs in half and placed them next to the shreds of the Office memo. “How long have you known?”
“British intelligence heard rumors for years about an Englishman working in Europe as a professional assassin. We were never able to learn his name. And never in our wildest dreams did we imagine he might be a paid asset of the Office.”
“He’s not a paid asset.”
“How would you describe him?”
“An old adversary who’s now a friend.”
“Adversary?”
“A consortium of Swiss bankers once hired him to kill me.”
“Consider yourself fortunate,” said Seymour. “Christopher Keller rarely fails to fulfill the terms of a contract. He’s very good at what he does.”
“He speaks highly of you, too, Graham.”
Seymour sat silently while a siren rose and faded in the street below. “Keller and I were close,” he said finally. “I fought the IRA from the comfort of my desk, and Keller was at the sharp end of my stick. He did the sort of things that were necessary to keep the British homeland safe. And in the end he paid a terrible price for it.”
“What’s his connection to Quinn?”
“I’ll let Keller tell you that part of the story. I’m not sure I can do it justice.”
A gust of wind hurled rain against the windows. The room lights flickered.
“I haven’t agreed to anything yet, Graham.”
“But you will. Otherwise,” Seymour added, “I’m going to drag your friend back to Britain in chains and hand him over to Her Majesty’s Government for prosecution.”
“On what charges?”
“He’s a deserter and a professional killer. I’m sure we’ll think of something.”
Gabriel only smiled. “A man in your position shouldn’t make idle threats.”
“I’m not.”
“Christopher Keller knows far too much about the private life of the British prime minister for HMG to ever put him on trial for desertion or anything else. Besides,” Gabriel added, “I suspect you have other plans for Keller.”
Seymour said nothing. Gabriel asked, “What else have you got in your briefcase?”
“A thick file on the life and times of Eamon Quinn.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“What we should have done years ago. Take him off the market as quickly as possible. And while you’re at it, find out who ordered and financed the operation to murder the princess.”
“Maybe Quinn’s returned to the fight.”
“The fight for a united Ireland?” Seymour shook his head. “That fight is over. If I had to guess, he killed her at the behest of one of his patrons. And we both know the cardinal rule when it comes to assassinations. It’s not important who fires the shot. It’s who pays for the bullet.”
Another gust of wind slammed against the windows. The lights dimmed and then died. The two spies sat in darkness for several minutes, neither man speaking.
“Who said that?” Gabriel asked finally.
“Said what?”
“That business about the bullet.”
“I believe it was Ambler.”
There was silence.
“I have other plans, Graham.”
“I know.”
“My wife is pregnant. Very pregnant.”
“So you’ll have to work quickly.”
“I suppose Uzi’s already approved it.”
“It was his idea.”
“Remind me to give Uzi a lousy assignment the moment after I’m sworn in as chief.”
A flash of lightning illuminated Seymour’s Cheshire cat grin. Then the darkness returned.
“I think I saw some candles in the kitchen when I was looking for a corkscrew.”
“I like the darkness,” said Gabriel. “It clarifies my thinking.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“I’m thinking about what I’m going to say to my wife.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes,” said Gabriel. “I’m wondering how Quinn knew the princess was going to be on that boat.”
9 (#ulink_72da6351-c41e-5fee-a24a-72bfe9f84ce0)
BERLIN–CORSICA (#ulink_72da6351-c41e-5fee-a24a-72bfe9f84ce0)
THE SAVOY HOTEL STOOD AT the unfashionable end of one of Berlin’s most fashionable streets. A red carpet stretched from its entrance; red tables stood beneath red umbrellas along its facade. The previous afternoon Keller had spotted a famous actor drinking coffee there, but now, as he emerged from the hotel’s entrance, the tables were deserted. The clouds were low and leaden and a cold wind was plucking the last leaves from the trees lining the pavements. Berlin’s brief autumn was receding. Soon it would be winter again.
“Taxi, monsieur?”
“No, thank you.”
Keller slipped a five-euro note into the valet’s outstretched hand and set out along the street. He had registered at the hotel under a French alias—management was under the impression he was a freelance journalist who wrote about films—and stayed only a single night. He had spent the previous evening at a modest hotel called the Seifert, and before that he had passed a sleepless night in a grim little pension called the Bella Berlin. All three establishments had one thing in common: they were near the Kempinski Hotel, which was Keller’s destination. He was going there to meet a man, a Libyan, a former close associate of Gaddafi who had fled to France after the revolution with two suitcases filled with cash and jewels. The Libyan had invested $2 million with a pair of French businessmen after receiving assurances of a substantial profit. The French businessmen were already weary of their association with the Libyan. They were worried, too, about his past reputation for violence, for it was said of the Libyan that he used to enjoy pounding spikes through the eyes of the regime’s opponents. The French businessmen had turned to Don Anton Orsati for help, and the don had given the assignment to his most accomplished assassin. Keller had to admit he was looking forward to the fulfillment of the contract. He had never cared for the now-deceased Libyan dictator or the thugs who had kept his regime in power. Gaddafi had allowed terrorists of every stripe to train at his desert camps, including members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He had also supplied the IRA with arms and explosives. Indeed, nearly all the Semtex used in IRA bombs came directly from Libya.
Keller crossed the Kantstrasse and headed down the ramp of an underground parking garage. On the second level, in a part of the garage untouched by security cameras, was a black BMW that had been left for him by a member of the Orsati organization. In the trunk was a Heckler & Koch 9mm pistol with a suppressor; in the glove box was a cardkey that would open the door of any guest room at the Kempinski Hotel. The key had been acquired for the price of five thousand euros from a Gambian who worked in the hotel’s laundry department. The Gambian had assured the man from the Orsati organization that the cardkey would remain operational for another forty-eight hours. After that, the codes would undergo a routine change, and hotel security would issue new passkeys to all essential employees. Keller hoped the Gambian was telling the truth. Otherwise, there would soon be an opening in the Kempinski’s laundry department.
Keller slipped the gun and the cardkey into his briefcase. Then he placed his overnight bag in the trunk of the BMW and headed up the ramp to the street. The Kempinski was a hundred meters farther along the Fasanenstrasse, a big hotel with Vegas-bright lights over the entrance and a Parisian-style café overlooking the Kurfürstendamm. At one of the tables sat the Libyan. He was accompanied by a man of perhaps sixty and a once-beautiful woman with coal-black hair and Cleopatra makeup. The man looked like an old comrade from the court of Gaddafi; the woman looked well cared for and very bored. Keller assumed she belonged to the Libyan’s friend, for the Libyan liked his women blond, professional, and pricey.
Keller entered the hotel, aware of the fact that several surveillance cameras were now watching him. It didn’t matter; he was wearing a dark wig and heavy false spectacles. Five hotel guests, new arrivals, judging by the look of them, were waiting for an elevator. Keller allowed them to board the first available carriage and then rode to the fifth floor alone, his head lowered in such a way that the surveillance camera could not clearly capture the features of his face. When the doors opened, he stepped out of the carriage with the air of a man who was not looking forward to returning to the loneliness of yet another hotel room. A single member of the housekeeping staff gave him a drowsy nod, but otherwise the corridor was empty. The cardkey was now in the breast pocket of his overcoat. He removed it as he approached Room 518 and inserted it into the slot. The green light shone, the electronic lock disengaged. The Gambian would live another day.
The room had been recently serviced. Even so, the stench of the Libyan’s appalling cologne persisted. Keller moved to the window and looked into the street. The Libyan and his two companions were still at their table at the café, though the woman appeared restless. In the time since Keller had seen them last, their plates had been cleared and coffee had been served. Ten minutes, he reckoned. Maybe less.
He turned from the window and calmly surveyed the room. The Kempinski thought it superior, but it was really quite ordinary: a double bed, a writing desk, a television console, a royal-blue armchair. The walls were thick enough to smother all sound from the adjoining rooms, though not thick enough to withstand a normal bullet, even a bullet that had penetrated a human body. As a result, Keller’s HK was loaded with 124-grain hollow-point rounds that would expand on impact. Any round that struck the intended target would remain there. And in the unlikely event Keller somehow missed, the round would lodge harmlessly in the wall with a dull thud.
He returned to the window and saw that the Libyan and his two companions were on their feet. The man of perhaps sixty was shaking the Libyan’s hand; the once-beautiful woman with coal-black hair was gazing longingly at the parade of exclusive shops lining the Ku-Damm. Keller drew the heavy curtains, sat down in the royal-blue armchair, and removed the HK from his briefcase. From the corridor came the squeak of a housekeeper’s trolley. Then all was silent. He glanced at his wristwatch and marked the time. Five minutes, he thought. Maybe less.
A benevolent sun shone brightly upon the island of Corsica as the overnight ferry from Marseilles eased into the port of Ajaccio. Keller filed off the vessel with the other passengers and made his way to the car park, where he had left his battered old Renault station wagon. A powdery dust covered the windows and the hood. Keller thought the dust a bad omen. In all likelihood the sirocco had carried it from North Africa. Instinctively, he touched the small red coral hand hanging around his neck by a strand of leather. The Corsicans believed the talisman had the power to ward off the occhju, the evil eye. Keller believed it, too, though the presence of North African dust on his car the morning after he had killed a Libyan suggested the talisman had failed to protect him. There was an old woman in his village, a signadora, who had the power to draw the evil from his body. Keller was not looking forward to seeing her, for the old woman also had the power to glimpse both the past and the future. She was one of the few people on the island who knew the truth about him. She knew his long litany of sins and misdeeds, and even claimed to know the time and circumstances of his death. It was the one thing she refused to tell him. “It is not my place,” she would whisper to him in her candlelit parlor. “Besides, to know how life ends would only ruin the story.”
Keller climbed behind the wheel of the Renault and set out down the island’s rugged western coastline, the turquoise-blue sea to his right, the high peaks of the interior to his left. To pass the time he listened to the news on the radio. There was nothing about a dead Libyan at a luxury hotel in Berlin. Keller doubted the body had even been discovered yet. He had committed the act in silence and upon leaving the room had hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the latch. Eventually, the Kempinski’s management would take it upon themselves to knock on the door. And upon receiving no response, management would enter the room and find a valued guest with two bullet holes over his heart and a third in the center of his forehead. Management would immediately telephone the police, of course, and a hasty search would commence for the dark-haired, mustachioed man seen entering the room. They would manage to track his movements immediately after the killing, but the trail would go cold in the wooded gloom of the Tiergarten. The police would never establish his identity. Some would suspect him of being a Libyan like his victim, but a few of the wiser veterans would speculate that he was the same high-priced professional who had been killing in Europe for years. And then they would wash their hands of it, for they knew that murders carried out by professional assassins were rarely solved.
Keller followed the coastline to the town of Porto and then turned inland. It was a Sunday; the roads were quiet, and in the hill towns church bells tolled. In the center of the island, near its highest point, was the small village of the Orsatis. It had been there, or so it was said, since the time of the Vandals, when people from the coasts took to the hills for safety. Time seemed to have stopped there. Children played in the streets at all hours because there were no predators. Nor were there any illegal narcotics, for no dealer would risk the wrath of the Orsatis by peddling drugs in their village. Nothing much happened there, and sometimes there was not enough work to be done. But it was clean and beautiful and safe, and the people who lived there seemed content to eat well, drink their wine, and enjoy time with their children and their elders. Keller always missed them when he was away from Corsica for long. He dressed like them, he spoke the Corsican dialect like them, and in the evening, when he played boules with the men in the village square, he gave the same disgusted shake of his head whenever someone spoke of the French or, heaven forbid, the Italians. Once the people of the village had called him “the Englishman.” Now he was merely Christopher. He was one of them.
The historic estate of the Orsati clan lay just beyond the village, in a small valley of olive trees that produced the island’s finest oil. Two armed guards stood watch at the entrance; they touched their Corsican flat caps respectfully as Keller turned through the gate and started up the long drive toward the villa. Laricio pine shaded the forecourt, but in the walled garden bright sunlight shone upon the long table that had been laid for the family’s traditional Sunday lunch. For now, the table was unoccupied. The clan was still at Mass, and the don, who no longer set foot in church, was upstairs in his office. He was seated at a large oaken table, peering into an open leather-bound ledger, when Keller entered. At his elbow was a decorative bottle of Orsati olive oil—olive oil being the legitimate business through which the don laundered the profits of death.
“How was Berlin?” he asked without looking up.
“Cold,” said Keller. “But productive.”
“Any complications?”
“No.”
Orsati smiled. The only thing he disliked more than complications were the French. He closed the ledger and settled his dark eyes on Keller’s face. As usual, Don Orsati was dressed in a crisp white shirt, loose-fitting trousers of pale cotton, and leather sandals that looked as though they had been purchased at the local outdoor market, which was indeed the case. His heavy mustache had been trimmed, and his head of bristly gray-black hair glistened with tonic. The don always took inordinate care with his grooming on Sunday. He no longer believed in God but insisted on keeping the Sabbath sacred. He refrained from foul language on the Lord’s Day, he tried to think good thoughts, and, most important, he forbade his taddunaghiu from fulfilling contracts. Even Keller, who had been raised an Anglican and was therefore considered a heretic, was bound by the don’s edicts. Recently, he had been forced to spend an additional night in Warsaw because Don Orsati would not grant him dispensation to kill the target, a Russian mobster, on the day of rest.
“You’ll stay for lunch,” the don was saying.
“Thank you, Don Orsati,” Keller said formally, “but I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“You? Impose?” The Corsican waved his hand dismissively.
“I’m tired,” said Keller. “It was a rough crossing.”
“You didn’t sleep on the ferry?”
“Evidently,” said Keller, “you haven’t been on a ferry recently.”
It was true. Anton Orsati rarely ventured beyond the well-guarded walls of his estate. The world came to him with its problems, and he made them go away—for a substantial fee, of course. He picked up a thick manila envelope and placed it in front of Keller.
“What’s that?”
“Consider it a Christmas bonus.”
“It’s October.”
The don shrugged. Keller lifted the flap of the envelope and peered inside. It was packed with bundles of hundred-euro notes. He lowered the flap and pushed the envelope toward the center of the table.
“Here on Corsica,” the don said with a frown, “it is impolite to refuse a gift.”
“The gift isn’t necessary.”
“Take it, Christopher. You’ve earned it.”
“You’ve made me rich, Don Orsati, richer than I ever dreamed possible.”
“But?”
Keller sat silently.
“A closed mouth catches neither flies nor food,” said the don, quoting from his seemingly bottomless supply of Corsican proverbs.
“Your point?”
“Speak, Christopher. Tell me what’s bothering you.”
Keller was staring at the money, consciously avoiding the don’s gaze.
“Are you bored with your work?”
“It’s not that.”
“Maybe you should take a break. You could focus your energies on the legitimate side of the business. There’s plenty of money to be made there.”
“Olive oil isn’t the answer, Don Orsati.”
“So there is a problem.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” The don regarded Keller carefully. “When you pull a tooth, Christopher, it will stop hurting.”
“Unless you have a bad dentist.”
“The only thing worse than a bad dentist is a bad companion.”
“It is better to be alone,” said Keller philosophically, “than to have bad companions.”
The don smiled. “You might have been born an Englishman, Christopher, but you have the soul of a Corsican.”
Keller stood. The don pushed the envelope across the tabletop.
“Are you sure you won’t stay for lunch?”
“I have plans.”
“Whatever they are,” the don said, “they’ll have to wait.”
“Why?”
“You have a visitor.”
Keller didn’t have to ask the visitor’s name. There were only a handful of people in the world who knew he was still alive, and only one who would dare to call on him unannounced.
“When did he arrive?”
“Last night,” answered the don.
“What does he want?”
“He wasn’t at liberty to say.” The don scrutinized Keller with the watchful eyes of a canine. “Is it my imagination,” he asked finally, “or has your mood suddenly improved?”
Keller departed without answering. Don Orsati watched him go. Then he looked down at the tabletop and swore softly. The Englishman had forgotten to take the envelope.
10 (#ulink_b21a091e-7b89-5459-9970-856b0fdbc7ea)
CORSICA (#ulink_b21a091e-7b89-5459-9970-856b0fdbc7ea)
CHRISTOPHER KELLER HAD ALWAYS TAKEN great care with his money. By his own calculation he had earned more than $20 million working for Don Anton Orsati and, through prudent investing, had made himself vastly wealthy. The bulk of his fortune was held by banks in Geneva and Zurich, but there were also accounts in Monaco, Liechtenstein, Brussels, Hong Kong, and the Cayman Islands. He even kept a small amount of money at a reputable bank in London. His British account manager believed him to be a reclusive resident of Corsica who, like Don Orsati, left the island infrequently. The government of France was of the same opinion. Keller paid taxes on his legitimate investment earnings and on the respectable salary he earned from the Orsati Olive Oil Company, where he served as director of central European sales. He voted in French elections, donated to French charities, rooted for French sports teams, and, on occasion, had been forced to utilize the services of the French national health care authority. He had never been charged with a crime of any sort, a noteworthy achievement for a man of the south, and his driving record was impeccable. All in all, with one significant exception, Christopher Keller was a model citizen.
An expert skier and climber, he had been quietly shopping for a chalet in the French Alps for some time. At present, he maintained a single residence, a villa of modest proportions located one valley over from the valley of the Orsatis. It had exterior walls of tawny brown, a red tile roof, a large blue swimming pool, and a wide terrace that received the sun in the morning and in the afternoon was shaded by pine. Inside, its large rooms were comfortably decorated in rustic furnishings covered in white, beige, and faded yellows. There were many shelves filled with serious books—Keller had briefly studied military history at Cambridge and was a voracious reader of politics and contemporary issues—and upon the walls hung a modest collection of modern and Impressionist paintings. The most valuable work was a small landscape by Monet, which Keller, through an intermediary, had acquired from Christie’s auction house in Paris. Standing before it now, one hand resting on his chin, his head tilted to one side, was Gabriel. He licked the tip of his forefinger, rubbed it over the surface, and shook his head slowly.
“What’s wrong?” asked the Englishman.
“It’s covered in surface grime. You really should let me clean it for you. It will only take—”
“I like it the way it is.”
Gabriel wiped his forefinger on the front of his jeans and turned to face Keller. The Englishman was ten years younger than Gabriel, four inches taller, and thirty pounds heavier, especially through the shoulders and arms, where he carried a lethal quantity of finely sculpted power and mass. His short hair was bleached blond from the sea; his skin was very dark from the sun. He had bright blue eyes, square cheekbones, and a thick chin with a chisel notch in the center of it. His mouth seemed permanently fixed in a mocking smile. Keller was a man without allegiance, without fear, and without morals, except when it came to matters of friendship and love. He had lived life on his own terms, and somehow he had won.
“I thought you were supposed to be in Rome,” he said.
“I was,” answered Gabriel. “But Graham Seymour dropped into town. He had something he wanted to show me.”
“What was it?”
“A photograph of a man walking through Heathrow Airport.”
Keller’s half-smile evaporated, his blue eyes narrowed. “How much does he know?”
“Everything, Christopher.”
“Am I in danger?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you agree to do a job for him.”
“What does he want?”
Gabriel smiled. “What you do best.”
Outside, the sun still held dominion over Keller’s terrace. They sat in a pair of comfortable garden chairs, a small wrought-iron table between them. On it lay Graham Seymour’s thick file on the professional exploits of one Eamon Quinn. Keller had yet to open it or even look at it. He was listening spellbound to Gabriel’s account of Quinn’s role in the murder of the princess.
When Gabriel finished, Keller held up the photograph of his recent passage through Heathrow Airport. “You gave me your word,” he said. “You swore that you would never tell Graham that we were working together.”
“I didn’t have to tell him. He already knew.”
“How?”
Gabriel explained.
“Devious bastard,” muttered Keller.
“He’s British,” said Gabriel. “It comes naturally.”
Keller looked at Gabriel carefully for a moment. “It’s funny,” he said, “but you don’t seem terribly upset about the situation.”
“It does present you with an interesting opportunity, Christopher.”
Beyond the rim of the valley a church bell tolled midday. Keller placed the photograph atop the file and lit a cigarette.
“Must you?” asked Gabriel, waving away the smoke.
“What choice do I have?”
“You can stop smoking and add several years to your life.”
“About Graham,” said Keller, exasperated.
“I suppose you can stay here in Corsica and hope he doesn’t decide to tell the French about you.”
“Or?”
“You can help me find Eamon Quinn.”
“And then?”
“You can go home again, Christopher.”
Keller raised his hand to the valley and said, “This is my home.”
“It isn’t real, Christopher. It’s a fantasy. It’s make-believe.”
“So are you.”
Gabriel smiled but said nothing. The church bell had fallen silent; the afternoon shadows were gathering at the edge of the terrace. Keller crushed out his cigarette and looked down at the unopened file.
“Interesting reading?” he asked.
“Quite.”
“Recognize anyone?”
“An MI5 man named Graham Seymour,” said Gabriel, “and an SAS officer who’s referred to only by his code name.”
“What is it?”
“Merchant.”
“Catchy.”
“I thought so, too.”
“What does it say about him?”
“It says he operated undercover in West Belfast for approximately a year in the late eighties.”
“Why did he stop?”
“His cover was blown. Apparently, there was a woman involved.”
“Does it mention her name?” asked Keller.
“No.”
“What happened next?”
“Merchant was kidnapped by the IRA and taken to a remote farmhouse for interrogation and execution. The farmhouse was in South Armagh. Quinn was there.”
“How did it end?”
“Badly.”
A gust of wind stirred the pine. Keller gazed upon his Corsican valley as though it were slipping from his grasp. Then he lit another cigarette and told Gabriel the rest of it.
11 (#ulink_cfc6f960-9302-5363-803b-c2c42f49c9f0)
CORSICA (#ulink_cfc6f960-9302-5363-803b-c2c42f49c9f0)
IT WAS KELLER’S APTITUDE WITH language that set him apart—not foreign languages, but the various ways in which the English language is spoken on the streets of Belfast and the six counties of Northern Ireland. The subtleties of local accents made it virtually impossible for officers of the SAS to operate undetected within the small, tightly knit communities of the province. As a result, most SAS men were forced to utilize the services of a Fred—the Regiment’s term for a local helper—when tracking IRA members or engaging in street surveillance. But not Keller. He developed the ability to mimic the various dialects of Ulster with the speed and confidence of a native. He could even shift accents at a moment’s notice—a Catholic from Armagh one minute, a Protestant from Belfast’s Shankill Road the next, then a Catholic from the Ballymurphy housing estates. His unique linguistic skills did not escape the notice of his superiors. Nor was it long before they came to the attention of an ambitious young intelligence officer who ran the Northern Ireland account for MI5.
“I assume,” said Gabriel, “that the young MI5 officer was Graham Seymour.”
Keller nodded. Then he explained that Seymour, in the late 1980s, was dissatisfied with the level of intelligence he was receiving from MI5’s informants in Northern Ireland. He wanted to insert his own agent into the IRA badlands of West Belfast to report on the movements and associations of known IRA commanders and volunteers. It was not a job for an ordinary MI5 officer. The agent would have to know how to handle himself in a world where one false step, one wrong glance, could get a man killed. Keller met with Seymour at a safe house in London and agreed to take on the assignment. Two months later he was back in Belfast posing as a Catholic named Michael Connelly. He took a two-room flat in the Divis Tower apartment complex on the Falls Road. His neighbor was a member of the IRA’s West Belfast Brigade. The British Army maintained an observation post on the roof and used the top two floors as barracks and office space. When the Troubles were at their worst, the soldiers came and went by helicopter. “It was madness,” said Keller, shaking his head slowly. “Absolute madness.”
While much of West Belfast was unemployed and on the dole, Keller soon found work as a deliveryman for a laundry service on the Falls Road. The job allowed him to move freely through the neighborhoods and enclaves of West Belfast without suspicion and gave him access to the homes and laundry of known IRA members. It was a remarkable achievement, but no accident. The laundry was owned and operated by British intelligence.
“It was one of our most closely held operations,” said Keller. “Even the prime minister wasn’t aware of it. We had a small fleet of vans, listening equipment, and a lab in the back. We tested every piece of laundry we could get our hands on for traces of explosives. And if we got a positive hit, we put the owner and his house under surveillance.”
Gradually, Keller began forming friendships with members of the dysfunctional community around him. His IRA neighbor invited him for dinner, and once, in an IRA bar on the Falls Road, a recruiter made a not-so-subtle pass at him, which Keller politely deflected. He attended mass regularly at St. Paul’s Church—as part of his training he had learned the rituals and doctrines of Catholicism—and on a wet Sunday in Lent he met a beautiful young girl there named Elizabeth Conlin. Her father was Ronnie Conlin, an IRA field commander for Ballymurphy.
“A serious player,” said Gabriel.
“As serious as it gets.”
“You decided to pursue the relationship.”
“I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”
“You were in love with her.”
Keller nodded slowly.
“How did you see her?”
“I used to sneak into her bedroom. She would hang a violet scarf in the window if it was safe. It was a tiny pebble-dash terrace house with walls like paper. I could hear her father in the next room. It was—”
“Madness,” said Gabriel.
Keller said nothing.
“Did Graham know?”
“Of course.”
“You told him?”
“I didn’t have to. I was under constant MI5 and SAS surveillance.”
“I assume he told you to break it off.”
“In no uncertain terms.”
“What did you do?”
“I agreed,” replied Keller. “With one condition.”
“You wanted to see her one last time.”
Keller lapsed into silence. And when finally he spoke again, his voice had changed. It had taken on the elongated vowels and rough edges of working-class West Belfast. He was no longer Christopher Keller; he was Michael Connelly, the laundry deliveryman from the Falls Road who had fallen in love with the beautiful daughter of an IRA chieftain from Ballymurphy. On his last night in Ulster, he left his van on the Springfield Road and scaled the garden wall of the Conlin house. The violet scarf was hanging in its usual place, but Elizabeth’s room was darkened. Keller soundlessly raised the window, parted the gauzy curtains, and slipped inside. Instantly, he absorbed a blow to the side of his head, like the blow of an ax blade, and began to fade from consciousness. The last thing he remembered before blacking out was the face of Ronnie Conlin.
“He was speaking to me,” said Keller. “He was telling me that I was about to die.”
Keller was bound, gagged, hooded, and bundled into the boot of a car. It took him from the slums of West Belfast to a farmhouse in South Armagh. There he was taken to a barn and beaten severely. Then he was tied to a chair for interrogation and trial. Four men from the IRA’s notorious South Armagh Brigade would serve as the jury. Eamon Quinn would serve as the prosecutor, judge, and executioner. He planned to administer the sentence with a field knife he had taken from a dead British soldier. Quinn was the IRA’s best bomb maker, a master technician, but when it came to personal killing he preferred the knife.
“He told me that if I cooperated, my death would be reasonable. If I didn’t, he was going to cut me to pieces.”
“What happened?”
“I got lucky,” said Keller. “They did a lousy job with the bindings, and I cut them to pieces instead. I did it so quickly they never knew what hit them.”
“How many?”
“Two,” answered Keller. “Then I got my hands on one of their guns and shot two more.”
“What happened to Quinn?”
“Quinn wisely fled the field of battle. Quinn lived to fight another day.”
The following morning the British Army announced that four members of the South Armagh Brigade had been killed in a raid on a remote IRA safe house. The official account made no mention of a kidnapped undercover SAS officer named Christopher Keller. Nor did it mention a laundry service on the Falls Road secretly owned by British intelligence. Keller was flown back to the mainland for treatment; the laundry was quietly closed. It was a major blow to British efforts in Northern Ireland.
“And Elizabeth?” asked Gabriel.
“They found her body two days later. Her head had been shaved. Her throat was slit.”
“Who did it?”
“I heard it was Quinn,” said Keller. “Apparently, he insisted on doing it himself.”
Upon his release from the hospital, Keller returned to SAS headquarters at Hereford for rest and recovery. He took long, punishing hikes on the Brecon Beacons and trained new recruits in the art of silent killing, but it was clear to his superiors that his experiences in Belfast had changed him. Then, in August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Keller rejoined his old Sabre squadron and was deployed to the Middle East. And on the evening of January 28, 1991, while searching for Scud missile launchers in Iraq’s western desert, his unit came under attack by Coalition aircraft in a tragic case of friendly fire. Only Keller survived. Enraged, he walked off the battlefield and, disguised as an Arab, slipped across the border into Syria. From there, he hiked westward across Turkey, Greece, and Italy, until he finally washed ashore in Corsica, where he fell into the waiting arms of Don Anton Orsati.
“Did you ever look for him?”
“Quinn?”
Gabriel nodded.
“The don forbade it.”
“But that didn’t stop you, did it?”
“Let’s just say I followed his career closely. I knew he went with the Real IRA after the Good Friday peace accords, and I knew he was the one who planted that bomb in the middle of Omagh.”
“And when he fled Ireland?”
“I made polite inquiries as to his whereabouts. Impolite inquiries, too.”
“Any of them bear fruit?”
“Most definitely.”
“But you never tried to kill him?”
“No,” said Keller, shaking his head. “The don forbade it.”
“But now you’ve got your chance.”
“With the blessing of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” Keller gave a brief smile. “Rather ironic, don’t you think?”
“What’s that?”
“Quinn drove me out of the game, and now he’s pulling me back in.” Keller looked at Gabriel seriously for a moment. “Are you sure you want to be involved in this?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because it’s personal,” replied Keller. “And when it’s personal, it tends to get messy.”
“I do personal all the time.”
“Messy, too.” The shadows had reclaimed the terrace. The wind made ripples upon the surface of Keller’s blue swimming pool. “And if I do this?” he asked. “What then?”
“Graham will give you a new British identity. A job, too.” Gabriel paused, then added, “If you’re interested.”
“A job doing what?”
“Use your imagination.”
Keller frowned. “What would you do if you were me?”
“I’d take the deal.”
“And give up all this?”
“It isn’t real, Christopher.”
Beyond the rim of the valley a church bell tolled one o’clock.
“What am I going to say to the don?” asked Keller.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s personal,” replied Gabriel. “And when it’s personal, it tends to get messy.”
There was a ferry leaving for Nice at six that evening. Gabriel boarded at half past five, drank a coffee in the café, and stepped onto the observation deck to wait for Keller. By 5:45 he had not arrived. Five additional minutes passed with no sign of him. Then Gabriel glimpsed a battered Renault turning into the car park and a moment later saw Keller trotting up the ramp with an overnight bag hanging from one powerful shoulder. They stood side by side at the railing and watched the lights of Ajaccio receding into the gloom. The gentle evening wind smelled of macchia, the dense undergrowth of scrub oak, rosemary, and lavender that covered much of the island. Keller drew the air deeply into his lungs before lighting a cigarette. The breeze carried his first exhalation of smoke across Gabriel’s face.
“Must you?”
Keller said nothing.
“I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind.”
“And let you go after Quinn alone?”
“You don’t think I can handle him?”
“Did I say that?”
Keller smoked in silence for a moment.
“How did the don take it?”
“He recited many Corsican proverbs about the ingratitude of children. And then he agreed to let me go.”
The lights of the island were growing dimmer; the wind smelled only of the sea. Keller reached into his coat pocket, removed a Corsican talisman, and held it out to Gabriel.
“A gift from the signadora.”
“We don’t believe in such things.”
“I’d take it if I were you. The old woman implied it could get nasty.”
“How nasty?”
Keller made no reply. Gabriel accepted the talisman and hung it around his neck. One by one the lights of the island went dark. And then it was gone.
12 (#ulink_90a874e7-363b-53a5-bb6f-3ac150d1720b)
DUBLIN (#ulink_90a874e7-363b-53a5-bb6f-3ac150d1720b)
TECHNICALLY, THE OPERATION UPON WHICH Gabriel and Christopher Keller embarked the following day was a joint undertaking between the Office and MI6. The British role was so black, however, that only Graham Seymour knew of it. Therefore, it was the Office that saw to the travel arrangements, and the Office that rented the Škoda sedan that was waiting in the long-term parking lot at Dublin Airport. Gabriel searched the undercarriage before climbing behind the wheel. Keller slid into the passenger seat and, frowning, closed the door.
“Couldn’t they have got something better than a Škoda?”
“It’s one of Ireland’s most popular cars, which means it won’t stand out.”
“What about guns?”
“Open the glove box.”
Keller did. Inside was a Beretta 9mm, fully loaded, along with a spare magazine and a suppressor.
“Only one?”
“We’re not going to war, Christopher.”
“That’s what you think.”
Keller closed the glove box, Gabriel inserted the key into the ignition. The engine hesitated, coughed, and then finally turned over.
“Still think they should have rented a Škoda?” asked Keller.
Gabriel slipped the car into gear. “Where do we start?”
“Ballyfermot.”
“Bally where?”
Keller pointed to the exit sign and said, “Bally that way.”
The Republic of Ireland was once a land with almost no violent crime. Until the late 1960s Ireland’s national police force, the Garda Síochána, numbered just seven thousand officers, and in Dublin there were only seven squad cars. Most crime was of the petty variety: burglaries, pickpocketing, the occasional strong-armed robbery. And when there was violence involved, it was usually fueled by passion, alcohol, or a combination of the two.
That changed with the outbreak of the Troubles across the border in Northern Ireland. Desperate for money and arms to fight the British Army, the Provisional IRA began robbing banks in the south. The low-level thieves from the impoverished slums and housing estates of Dublin learned from the Provos’ tactics and began carrying out daring armed heists of their own. The Gardaí, understaffed and outmatched, were quickly overwhelmed by the twin threat of the IRA and the local crime lords. By 1970 Ireland was tranquil no more. It was a gangland where criminals and revolutionaries operated with impunity.
In 1979 two unlikely events far from Ireland’s shores sped the country’s descent into lawlessness and social chaos. The first was the Iranian revolution. The second was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Both resulted in a flood of cheap heroin onto the streets of Western European cities. The drug poured into the slums of south Dublin in 1980. A year later it ravaged the ghettos of the north side. Lives were broken, families were shattered, and crime rates soared as desperate addicts tried to feed their habits. Entire communities became dystopian wastelands where junkies shot up openly in the streets and dealers were kings.
The economic miracle of the 1990s transformed Ireland from one of Europe’s poorest countries into one of its richest, but with prosperity came an even greater appetite for narcotics, especially cocaine and Ecstasy. The old crime bosses gave way to a new breed of kingpins who waged bloody wars over turf and market share. Where once Irish mobsters used sawed-off shotguns to enforce their will, the new gangland warriors armed themselves with AK-47s and other heavy weaponry. Bullet-riddled bodies began to appear on the streets of the housing estates. According to a Garda estimate in 2012, twenty-five violent drug gangs now plied their deadly trade in Ireland. Several had established lucrative ties to foreign organized crime groups, including remnants of the Real IRA.
“I thought they were against drugs,” said Gabriel.
“That might be true up there,” said Keller, pointing toward the north, “but down here in the Republic it’s a different story. For all intents and purposes, the Real IRA is just another drug gang. Sometimes they deal drugs directly. Sometimes they run protection rackets. Mainly, they extort money from the dealers.”
“What does Liam Walsh do?”
“A little of everything.”
Rain blurred the headlamps of the evening rush hour traffic. It was lighter than Gabriel had expected. He supposed it was the economy. Ireland’s had fallen farther and faster than most. Even the drug dealers were hurting.
“Walsh has republicanism in his veins,” Keller was saying. “His father was IRA, and so were his uncles and brothers. He went with the Real IRA after the great schism, and when the war effectively ended he came down to Dublin to make his fortune in the drug business.”
“What’s his connection to Quinn?”
“Omagh.” Keller pointed to the right and said, “There’s your turn.”
Gabriel guided the car into Kennelsfort Road. It was lined on both sides by terraces of small two-story houses. Not quite the Irish miracle, but not a slum, either.
“Is this Ballyfermot?”
“Palmerstown.”
“Which way?”
With a wave of his hand, Keller instructed Gabriel to continue straight. They skirted an industrial park of low gray warehouses, and suddenly they were on Ballyfermot Road. After a moment they came upon a parade of sad little shops: a discount department store, a discount linen store, a discount optician, a chip shop. Across the street was a Tesco supermarket, and next to the supermarket was a betting parlor. Sheltering in the entrance were four men in black leather coats. Liam Walsh was the smallest of the lot. He was smoking a cigarette; they were all smoking cigarettes. Gabriel turned into the Tesco car park and eased into an empty space. It had a clear view of the betting parlor.
“Maybe you should leave the engine running,” said Keller.
“Why?”
“It might not start again.”
Gabriel killed the engine and doused the headlamps. Rain beat heavily against the windscreen. After a few seconds Liam Walsh vanished in a blurry kaleidoscope of light. Then Gabriel flicked the wipers and Walsh reappeared. A long black Mercedes sedan had pulled up outside the betting parlor. It was the only Mercedes on the street, probably the only one in the neighborhood. Walsh was talking to the driver through the open window.
“He looks like a real pillar of the community,” said Gabriel quietly.
“That’s how he likes to portray himself.”
“So why is he standing outside a betting parlor?”
“He wants the other gangs to know that he’s watching his turf. A rival tried to kill him on that very spot last year. If you look closely, you can see the bullet holes in the wall.”
The Mercedes moved off. Liam Walsh returned to the shelter of the entrance.
“Who are those nice-looking fellows with him?”
“The two on the left are his bodyguards. The other one is his second-in-command.”
“Real IRA?”
“To the core.”
“Armed?”
“Most definitely.”
“So what do we do?”
“We wait for him to make a move.”
“Here?”
Keller shook his head. “If they see us sitting in a parked car, they’ll assume we’re Garda or members of a rival gang. And if they assume that, we’re dead.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t sit here.”
Keller nodded toward the chip shop on the other side of the road and climbed out. Gabriel followed after him. They stood side by side along the edge of the road, hands thrust into their pockets, heads bowed against the windblown rain, waiting for an opening in the traffic.
“They’re watching us,” said Keller.
“You noticed that, too?”
“Hard not to.”
“Does Walsh know your face?”
“He does now.”
The traffic broke; they crossed the road and headed toward the entrance of the chip shop. “It might be better if you don’t speak,” said Keller. “This isn’t the sort of neighborhood that gets a lot of visitors from exotic lands.”
“I speak perfect English.”
“That’s the problem.”
Keller opened the door and went inside first. It was a narrow room with a cracked linoleum floor and peeling walls. The air was thick with grease, starch, and the faint smell of wet wool. There was a pretty young girl behind the counter and an empty table against the window. Gabriel sat with his back to the road while Keller went over to the counter and ordered in the accent of someone from south Dublin.
“Very impressive,” murmured Gabriel when Keller joined him. “For a minute there I thought you were about to break into ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.’”
“As far as that pretty young lass is concerned, I’m as Irish as she is.”
“Yes,” said Gabriel doubtfully. “And I’m Oscar Wilde.”
“You don’t think I can pass for an Irishman?”
“Maybe one who’s been on a very long vacation in the sun.”
“That’s my story.”
“Where have you been?”
“Majorca,” replied Keller. “The Irish love Majorca, especially Irish mobsters.”
Gabriel glanced around the interior of the café. “I wonder why.”
The girl walked over to the table and deposited a plate of chips and two Styrofoam cups of milky tea. As she was leaving, the door opened and two pale men in their mid-twenties hurried in out of the weather. A woman in a damp coat and downtown shoes entered a moment later. The two men took a table near Keller and Gabriel and began speaking in a dialect that Gabriel found almost impenetrable. The woman sat at the back of the shop. She had only tea to drink and was reading a worn paperback book.
“What’s going on outside?” asked Gabriel.
“Four men standing in front of a betting parlor. One man looking like he’s had enough of the rain.”
“Where does he live?”
“Not far,” answered Keller. “He likes to live among the people.”
Gabriel drank some of the tea and made a face. Keller pushed the plate of chips across the table. “Eat some.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I want to live long enough to see my children born.”
“Good idea.” Keller smiled, then added, “Men of your age really should be careful about what they eat.”
“Watch yourself.”
“How old are you, exactly?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Problems with memory loss?”
Gabriel drank some of the tea. Keller nibbled at the chips.
“They’re not as good as the fries in the south of France,” he said.
“Did you get a receipt?”
“Why would I need a receipt?”
“I hear the bookkeepers at MI6 are very picky.”
“Let’s not get carried away about MI6 just yet. I haven’t made any decisions.”
“Sometimes our best decisions are made for us.”
“You sound like the don.” Keller ate another chip. “Is it true about MI6 bookkeepers?”
“I was just making conversation.”
“Are yours tough?”
“The worst.”
“But not with you.”
“Not so much.”
“So why didn’t they get you something better than a Škoda?”
“The Škoda is fine.”
“I hope he’ll fit in the trunk.”
“We’ll slam the lid on him a few times if we have to.”
“What about the safe house?”
“I’m sure it’s lovely, Christopher.”
Keller didn’t appear convinced. He picked up another chip, thought better of it, and dropped it onto the plate.
“What’s going on behind me?” he asked.
“Two lads speaking no known language. One woman reading.”
“What’s she reading?”
“I believe it’s John Banville.”
Keller nodded thoughtfully, his eyes on Ballyfermot Road.
“What do you see?” asked Gabriel.
“One man standing outside a betting parlor. Three men getting into a car.”
“What kind of car?”
“Black Mercedes.”
“Better than a Škoda.”
“Much.”
“So what do we do?”
“We leave the fries and take the tea.”
“When?”
Keller rose to his feet.
13 (#ulink_3ddb5e54-9b84-5df5-aeb2-e82788b87378)
BALLYFERMOT, DUBLIN (#ulink_3ddb5e54-9b84-5df5-aeb2-e82788b87378)
THEY DROPPED THE STYROFOAM CUPS into a rubbish bin in the Tesco parking lot and climbed into the Škoda. This time, Keller drove; it was his turf. He eased into Ballyfermot Road and worked his way through the traffic until there were two cars separating them from the Mercedes. He drove calmly, one hand balanced atop the steering wheel, the other resting on the automatic shift. His eyes were straight ahead. Gabriel had commandeered the side-view mirror and was watching the traffic behind them.
“Well?” asked Keller.
“You’re very good, Christopher. You’re going to make a fine MI6 officer.”
“I was asking whether we’re being followed.”
“We’re not.”
Keller removed his hand from the shift and used it to extract a cigarette from his coat pocket. Gabriel tapped the black-and-yellow notice on the visor and said, “This is a no-smoking car.”
Keller lit the cigarette. Gabriel lowered his window a few inches to vent the smoke.
“They’re stopping,” he said.
“I can see that.”
The Mercedes turned into an angled parking space outside a newsagent. For a few seconds no one got out. Then Liam Walsh stepped from the rear passenger-side door and entered the shop. Keller drove about fifty meters farther along the road and parked outside a takeaway pizza parlor. He killed the lights but left the engine running.
“I suppose he needed to pick up a few things on his way home.”
“Like what?”
“A Herald,” suggested Keller.
“No one reads newspapers anymore, Christopher. Haven’t you heard?”
Keller glanced toward the pizza parlor. “Maybe you should go inside and get us a couple of slices.”
“How do I order without speaking?”
“You’ll think of something.”
“What kind of pizza do you like?”
“Go,” said Keller.
Gabriel climbed out and entered the shop. There were three people in the queue in front of him. He stood there waiting as the smell of warm cheese and yeast washed over him. Then he heard a brief burst of a car horn and, turning, saw the black Mercedes speeding off along Ballyfermot Road. He went back outside and lowered himself into the passenger seat. Keller reversed out of the space, slipped the car into drive, and accelerated slowly.
“Did he buy anything?” asked Gabriel.
“Couple of papers and a pack of Winstons.”
“How did he look when he came out?”
“Like he really didn’t need newspapers or cigarettes.”
“I assume the Garda watches him on a regular basis?”
“I certainly hope so.”
“Which means he’s used to being followed from time to time by men in unmarked sedans.”
“One would think.”
“He’s turning,” said Gabriel.
“I can see that.”
The car had turned into a bleak, unlit street of small terraced houses. No traffic, no shops, no place where two outsiders might conceal themselves. Keller pulled to the curb and doused the headlamps. A hundred meters farther down the street, the Mercedes nosed into a drive. The lights of the car went dark. Four doors opened, four men climbed out.
“Chez Walsh?” asked Gabriel.
Keller nodded.
“Married?”
“Not anymore.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Could be.”
“What about a dog?”
“You have a problem with dogs?”
Gabriel didn’t answer. Instead, he watched the four men approach the house and disappear through the front door.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“I suppose we could spend the next several days waiting for a better opportunity.”
“Or?”
“We take him now.”
“There are four of them and two of us.”
“One,” said Keller. “You’re not coming.”
“Why not?”
“Because the future chief of the Office can’t get mixed up in something like this. Besides,” Keller added, patting the bulge beneath his jacket, “we only have one gun.”
“Four against one,” said Gabriel after a moment. “Not very good odds.”
“Actually, given my history, I like my chances.”
“How do you intend to play it?”
“The same way we used to play it in Northern Ireland,” answered Keller. “Big boys’ games, big boys’ rules.”
Keller climbed out without another word and soundlessly closed the door. Gabriel swung a leg over the center console and slid behind the wheel. He flicked the wipers and glimpsed Keller walking along the street, hands in his coat pockets, shoulders tilted into the wind. He checked his BlackBerry. It was 8:27 p.m. in Dublin, 10:27 p.m. in Jerusalem. He thought of his beautiful young wife sitting alone in their apartment in Narkiss Street, and of his two unborn children resting comfortably in her womb. And here he was on a desolate street in south Dublin, a sentinel on yet another night watch, waiting for a friend to settle an old score. The rain hammered against the windscreen, the bleak street became a watery dreamscape. Gabriel flicked the wipers a second time and saw Keller pass through a sphere of yellow sodium light. And when he flicked the wipers a third time, Keller was gone.
The house was located at 48 Rossmore Road. It had a gray pebble-dash exterior, with a white-framed window on the ground floor and two more on the second. The narrow drive had space enough for a single car. Next to the drive was a gated walkway, and next to the walkway was a patch of grass bordered by a low hedgerow. It was respectable in every way, save for the man who lived there.
Like all the houses at that end of the street, Number 48 had a garden in back, beyond which spread the sporting fields of a Catholic school for boys. The entrance to the school was around the corner on Le Fanu Road. The main gate was open; there seemed to be a gathering of the parent body in the assembly hall. Keller passed through the gate unnoticed and struck out across a blacktop lined for games of every sort. And suddenly he was back at the dreary school in Surrey where his parents had banished him at the age of ten. He was the boy of whom much was expected—a good family, an excellent student, a natural leader. The older boys never touched him because they feared him. The headmaster once let him off without a beating because secretly the headmaster feared him, too.
At the edge of the blacktop was a row of dripping trees. Keller passed beneath their bare limbs and set out across the darkened sporting fields. Along their northern edge rose a wall, approximately two meters in height, covered in vines. Beyond it were the rear gardens of the houses lining Rossmore Road. Keller went to the farthest corner of the field and paced off fifty-seven steps precisely. Then, silently, he scaled the wall and dropped toward the ground on the other side. By the time his shoes struck the damp earth, he had drawn the silenced Beretta and leveled it toward the back door of the house. Lights burned within; shadows moved against the drawn curtains. Keller held the gun tightly in his hands, watching, listening. Big boys’ games, he thought. Big boys’ rules.
At ten minutes past nine o’clock, Gabriel’s BlackBerry vibrated softly. He raised it to his ear, listened, and then killed the connection. The rain had given way to a listless mist; Rossmore Road was empty of traffic and pedestrians. He drove to the house at Number 48, parked in the street, and switched off the engine. Again his BlackBerry vibrated, but this time he did not answer. Instead, he pulled on a pair of flesh-colored rubber gloves, climbed out, and opened the modest-sized trunk. Inside was a suitcase that had been left by the courier from Dublin Station. Gabriel removed it and carried it up the garden walk. The front door yielded to his touch; he stepped inside and closed it quietly behind him. Keller stood in the entrance hall, the Beretta in his hand. The air smelled of cordite and, faintly, of blood. It was a smell that was all too familiar to Gabriel. He walked past Keller without a word and entered the sitting room. A cloud of smoke hung on the air. Three men, each with a neat bullet hole in the center of his forehead, a fourth with a smashed nose and a jaw that looked as if it had been dislodged with a sledgehammer. Gabriel reached down and searched the neck for a pulse. Then, after finding one, he unzipped the suitcase and went to work.
The suitcase contained three rolls of heavy-duty duct tape, a dozen disposable flex cuffs, a nylon bag capable of holding a man six feet in height, a black hood, a blue-and-white tracksuit, espadrilles, two changes of undergarments, a first aid kit, earplugs, vials of sedative, syringes, rubbing alcohol, and a copy of the Koran. The Office referred to the contents of the suitcase as a mobile detainee pack. Among veteran field agents, however, it was known as a terrorist travel kit.
After determining that Walsh was in no danger of expiration, Gabriel mummified him in duct tape. He didn’t bother with the plastic flex cuffs; in matters of art and physical restraint, he was a traditionalist by nature. As he was applying the last swaths of tape to Walsh’s mouth and eyes, the Irishman began to regain consciousness. Gabriel quieted him with a dose of the sedative. Then, with Keller’s help, he placed Walsh in the duffel bag and pulled the zipper closed.
The house had no garage, which meant they had no choice but to take Walsh out the front door, in plain view of the neighbors. Gabriel found the key to the Mercedes on the body of one of the dead men. He moved the car into the street and backed the Škoda into the drive. Keller carried Walsh outside alone and deposited him in the open trunk. Then he climbed into the passenger seat and allowed Gabriel to drive. It was for the best. In Gabriel’s experience, it was unwise to allow a man who had just killed three people to operate a motor vehicle.
“Did you turn out the lights?”
Keller nodded.
“What about the doors?”
“They’re locked.”
Keller removed the suppressor and the magazine from the Beretta and placed all three in the glove box. Gabriel turned into the street and started back toward Ballyfermot Road.
“How many rounds did you fire?” he asked.
“Three,” answered Keller.
“How long before the Garda finds those bodies?”
“It’s not the Garda we should be worried about.”
Keller flicked his cigarette into the darkness. Gabriel saw sparks explode in his rearview mirror.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Like I never left.”
“That’s the problem with revenge, Christopher. It never makes you feel better.”
“That’s true,” said Keller, lighting another cigarette. “And I’m just getting started.”
14 (#ulink_1b84e554-2010-5faf-942a-4c248bd082e9)
CLIFDEN, COUNTY GALWAY (#ulink_1b84e554-2010-5faf-942a-4c248bd082e9)
THE COTTAGE STOOD ON DOONEN ROAD, perched atop a high rocky bluff overlooking the dark waters of Salt Lake. It had three bedrooms, a large kitchen with modern appliances, a formal dining room, a small library and study, and a cellar with walls of stone. The owner, a successful Dublin lawyer, had wanted a thousand euros for a week. Housekeeping had countered with fifteen hundred for two, and the lawyer, who rarely received offers in winter, accepted the deal. The money appeared in his bank account the next morning. It came from something called Taurus Global Entertainment, a television production company based in the Swiss city of Montreux. The lawyer was told the two men who would be staying in his cottage were Taurus executives who were coming to Ireland to work on a project that was sensitive in nature. That much, at least, was true.
The cottage was set back from Doonen Road by approximately a hundred meters. There was a flimsy aluminum gate that had to be opened and closed by hand and a gravel drive that wound its way steeply up the bluff through the gorse and the heather. On the highest point of the land stood three ancient trees bowed by the wind that blew from the North Atlantic and up the narrows of Clifden Bay. The wind was cold and without remorse. It rattled the windows of the cottage, clawed at the tiles of the roof, and prowled the rooms each time a door opened. The small terrace was uninhabitable, a no-man’s-land. Even the gulls did not stay there long.
Doonen Road was not a real road but a narrow strip of pavement, scarcely wide enough for a single car, with a ribbon of green grass down the center. Holidaymakers traveled it occasionally, but mainly it served as the back door to Clifden village. It was a young town by Irish standards, founded in 1814 by a landowner and sheriff named John d’Arcy who wished to create an island of order within the violent and lawless wilds of Connemara. D’Arcy built a castle for himself, and for the villagers a lovely town with paved streets and squares and a pair of churches with steeples that could be seen for miles. The castle was now a ruin, but the village, once virtually depopulated by the Great Famine, was among the most vibrant in the west of Ireland.
One of the men staying in the rented cottage, the smaller of the two, hiked to the village each day, usually in late morning, dressed in a dark green oilskin coat with a rucksack over his shoulder and a flat cap pulled low over his brow. He would purchase a few things at the supermarket and snare a bottle or two from Ferguson Fine Wines, Italian usually, sometimes French. And then, having acquired his provisions, he would wander past the shop windows along Main Street with the air of a man who was preoccupied by weightier matters. On one occasion he popped into the Lavelle Art Gallery to have a quick peek at the stock. The proprietor would later recall that he seemed unusually knowledgeable about paintings. His accent was hard to place. Maybe German, maybe something else. It didn’t matter; to the people of Connemara, everyone else had an accent.
On the fourth day his stroll along Main Street was more perfunctory than usual. He entered only a single shop, the newsagent, and purchased four packets of American cigarettes and a copy of the Independent. The front page was filled with the news from Dublin, where three members of the Real IRA had been found slain in a house in Ballyfermot. Another man was missing and presumed abducted. The Garda was searching for him. So, too, were elements of the Real IRA.
“Drug gangs,” muttered the man behind the counter.
“Terrible,” agreed the visitor with the accent no one could quite place.
He inserted the newspaper into his rucksack and, with some reluctance, the cigarettes. Then he hiked back to the cottage owned by the lawyer from Dublin, who, as it turned out, was deeply loathed by the full-time residents of Clifden. The other man, the one with skin like leather, was listening intently to the midday news on RTÉ.
“We’re close,” was all he said.
“When?”
“Maybe tonight.”
The smaller of the two men went onto the terrace while the other man smoked. A black storm was pushing up Clifden Bay, and the wind felt as though it were filled with shrapnel. Five minutes was all he could stand. Then he went back inside, into the smoke and the tension of the wait. He felt no shame. Even the gulls did not stay on the terrace for long.
Throughout his long career, Gabriel had had the misfortune of meeting many terrorists: Palestinian terrorists, Egyptian terrorists, Saudi terrorists, terrorists motivated by faith, terrorists motivated by loss, terrorists who had been born in the worst slums of the Arab world, terrorists who had been raised in the material comfort of the West. Oftentimes, he imagined what these men might have achieved had they chosen another path. Many were highly intelligent, and in their unforgiving eyes he saw lifesaving cures never found, software never devised, music never composed, and poems never written. Liam Walsh, however, made no such impression. Walsh was a killer without remorse or proper education who had no ambition in life other than the destruction of life and property. In his case a career in terrorism, even by the reduced standards of the diehard Irish republicans, was about the best he could have hoped for.
He was without physical fear, however, and possessed a natural obduracy that made him difficult to break. For the first forty-eight hours he was left in total isolation in the damp chill of the cellar, blindfolded, gagged, deafened by earplugs, immobilized by duct tape. He was offered no food, only water, which he refused. Keller saw to his bathroom needs, which were minimal given his dietary restrictions. When necessary, he addressed Walsh in the accent of a Protestant of the working classes from East Belfast. The Irishman was offered no way out of his predicament, and he did not ask for one. Having seen three of his mates killed in the blink of an eye, he seemed resigned to his fate. Like the SAS, Irish terrorists and drug gangsters played by big boys’ rules.
On the morning of the third day, maddened by thirst, he partook of a few ounces of room-temperature water. At midday he drank tea with milk and sugar, and in the evening he was given more tea and a single slice of toasted bread. It was then that Keller addressed him for the first time at any length. “You’re in a shitload of trouble, Liam,” he said in his East Belfast accent. “And the only way out is to tell me what I want to know.”
“Who are you?” asked Walsh through the pain of his broken jaw.
“That depends entirely on you,” replied Keller. “If you talk to me, I’ll be your best friend in the world. If you don’t, you’re going to end up like your three friends.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Omagh,” was all Keller said.
On the morning of the fourth day, Keller removed the plugs from Walsh’s ears and the gag from his mouth and elaborated on the situation in which the Irishman now found himself. Keller claimed to be a member of a small Protestant vigilante group seeking justice for the victims of republican terrorism. He suggested it had ties to the Ulster Volunteer Force, the loyalist paramilitary group that had killed at least five hundred people, mainly Roman Catholic civilians, during the worst of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The UVF accepted a ceasefire in 1994, but its murals, with their images of armed masked men, still adorned walls in Protestant neighborhoods and towns in Ulster. Many of the murals bore the same slogan: “Prepared for peace, ready for war.” The same could have been said for Keller.
“I’m looking for the one who built the bomb,” he explained. “You know the bomb I’m talking about, Liam. The bomb that killed twenty-nine innocent people in Omagh. You were there that day. You were in the car with him.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You were there, Liam,” Keller repeated. “And you were in contact with him after the movement went to shit. He came down here to Dublin. You looked after him until it got too hot.”
“It’s not true. None of it’s true.”
“He’s back in circulation, Liam. Tell me where I can find him.”
Walsh said nothing for a moment. “And if I tell you?” he asked finally.
“You’ll spend some time in captivity, a long time, but you’ll live.”
“Bullshit,” spat Walsh.
“We’re not interested in you, Liam,” answered Keller calmly. “Only him. Tell us where we can find him, and we’ll let you live. Play dumb, and I’m going to kill you. And it won’t be with a nice neat bullet to the head. It’ll hurt, Liam. It’ll hurt badly.”
That afternoon a storm laid siege to the length and breadth of Connemara. Gabriel sat by the fire reading from a volume of Fitzgerald while Keller drove the windblown countryside looking for unusual Garda activity. Liam Walsh remained in isolation in the cellar, bound, gagged, blinded, deafened. He was given no liquid or food. By that evening he was so weakened by hunger and dehydration that Keller almost had to carry him to the toilet.
“How long?” asked Gabriel over dinner.
“We’re close,” said Keller.
“That’s what you said earlier.”
Keller was silent.
“Is there anything we can do to hurry things along? I’d like to be out of here before the Garda come knocking on the door.”
“Or the Real IRA,” added Keller.
“Well?”
“He’s immune to pain at this point.”
“What about water?”
“Water’s always good.”
“Does he know?”
“He knows.”
“Do you need help?”
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Daniel Silva
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Шпионские детективы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva delivers another stunning thriller in his latest action-packed tale of high stakes international intrigue featuring the inimitable Gabriel Allon.She is an iconic member of the British Royal Family, beloved for her beauty and charitable works, resented by her former husband and his mother, the Queen of England. When a bomb explodes aboard her holiday yacht, British intelligence turns to one man to track down herkiller: legendary spy and assassin Gabriel Allon.Gabriel’s target is Eamon Quinn, a master bomb maker and mercenary of death who sells his services to the highest bidder. Fortunately Gabriel does not pursue him alone; at his side is Christopher Keller, a British commando turned professional assassin who knows Quinn’s murderous handiwork all too well.And though Gabriel does not realize it, he is stalking an old enemy—a cabal of evil that wants nothing more than to see him dead. Gabriel will find it necessary to oblige them, for when a man is out for vengeance, death has its distinct advantages….