“You don’t seem terribly surprised to see me, Alexei.”
“Have we met?” murmured the Russian.
Gabriel gave a humorless smile. “No,” he said after a moment, “I haven’t had the displeasure until now. But I know your work well. Very well, in fact. Chapter and verse. There are just a few small details I need to clear up.”
“What are you offering, Allon?”
“Nothing.”
“Then you’ll get nothing in return.”
Gabriel pointed the gun toward Rozanov’s right foot and pulled the trigger. The crack of the gunshot echoed among the trees. So did the Russian’s screams.
“Are you beginning to get a sense of the gravity of your situation, Alexei?”
Rozanov was at that moment incapable of speech, so Gabriel spoke for him.
“You and your service left a bomb on Brompton Road in London. It was meant for my friend and me, but it killed fifty-two innocent people. You killed Charlotte Harris of Shepherd’s Bush. You killed her son, who was called Peter after his grandfather. It’s because of them that you’re here tonight.” Gabriel pointed the Glock at Rozanov’s face. “How do you plead, Alexei?”
“Eamon Quinn planted that bomb,” gasped Rozanov. “Not us.”
“You paid him to do it, Alexei. And you gave him a helper named Katerina.”
Rozanov looked up sharply and stared at Gabriel through a haze of pain.
“Where’s Quinn?” asked Gabriel.
“I don’t know where he is.”
“Where?” asked Gabriel again.
“I’m telling you, Allon. I don’t know where he is.”
Gabriel aimed the gun at Rozanov’s left foot and pulled the trigger.
“Jesus! Please stop!”
The Russian was no longer screaming in pain. He was weeping like a child—weeping, thought Gabriel, like the limbless survivors of one of Quinn’s bombs. Quinn who could make a ball of fire travel a thousand feet per second. Quinn who was at a camp in Libya with a Palestinian named Tariq al-Hourani.
Do you suppose they knew each other?
I can’t imagine they didn’t.
“Let’s start with something simple,” said Gabriel calmly. “How did you get the number for my mobile phone?”
“It happened while you were in Omagh,” said the Russian. “At the memorial. A woman was following you. She pretended to take your picture.”
“I remember her.”
“She wirelessly attacked your BlackBerry. We were never able to decrypt any of your files, but we were able to get your number.”
“Which you gave to Quinn.”
“Yes.”
“It was Quinn who sent me that text message in London.”
“‘The bricks are in the wall.’”
“Where was he when he sent it?”
“Brompton Road,” said the Russian. “Safely out of the blast zone.”
“Why did you let him do it?”
“He wanted you to know it was him.”
“Professional pride?”
“Apparently, it had something to do with a man named Tariq.”
Gabriel felt his heart give a sideways lurch. “Tariq al-Hourani?”
“Yes, that’s him. The Palestinian.”
“What about Tariq?”
“Quinn said he wanted to repay an old debt.”
“By killing me?”
Rozanov nodded. “Evidently, they were quite close.”
It had to be true, thought Gabriel. There was no way Alexei Rozanov could have known about Tariq.
“Does Quinn know I’m still alive?”
“He was told earlier today.”
“So you do know where he is?”
Rozanov said nothing. Gabriel pressed the barrel of the Glock against the inside the Russian’s knee.
“Where is he, Alexei?”
“He’s back in England.”
“Where in England?”
“I don’t know.”
Gabriel ground the barrel of the gun painfully into the Russian’s knee.
“I swear to you, Allon. I don’t know where he is.”
“Why is he back in England?”
“The second phase of the operation.”
“Where will it happen?”
“Guy’s Hospital in London.”
“When?”
“Three p.m. tomorrow.”
“And the target?”
“It’s the prime minister. Quinn and Katerina are going to kill Jonathan Lancaster tomorrow afternoon in London.”
59
NORTHERN GERMANY
THE RUSSIAN WAS WEAKENING, losing blood, losing the will to live. Even so, Gabriel walked him through it all, step by step, deal by deal, betrayal by betrayal, from the operation’s sorry beginning to the e-mail that had arrived at Moscow Center earlier that evening. The e-mail that had been sent from an insecure device because the SVR-issue mobile phone belonging to one Katerina Akulova had transmitted its final watery signal from the bottom of the North Sea. Quinn, said Rozanov, had taken matters into his own hands. Quinn was outside Moscow Center’s control. Quinn had gone rogue.
“Where were they when they sent the e-mail?”
“We were never able to trace it back to the source.”
Gabriel stamped hard on Rozanov’s shattered right foot. The Russian, when he regained the ability to speak, said the e-mail had been sent from an Internet café in the town of Fleetwood.
“Do they have a car?” asked Gabriel.
“A Renault.”
“Model?”
“I believe it’s a Scénic.”
“What kind of attack is it going to be?”
“We’re talking about Eamon Quinn. What do you think?”
“Vehicle borne?”
“That’s his specialty.”
“Car or truck?”
“Van.”
“Where is it?”
“A garage in East London.”
“Where in East London?”
Rozanov recited an address on Thames Road in Barking before his chin fell to his chest in exhaustion. With a glance, Gabriel instructed Keller and Mikhail to release their grip on him. When they did, the Russian toppled forward like a tree and landed on the damp floor of the forest. Gabriel rolled him over and pointed the gun at his face.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Rozanov.
Gabriel stared at the Russian down the barrel of the gun but said nothing.
“Perhaps it’s true what they say about you.”
“What’s that?”
“That you’re too old. That you don’t have the stomach for it anymore.”
Gabriel smiled. “I have one more question for you, Alexei.”
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
“Except for how you discovered I was still alive.”
“We learned it through a communications intercept.”
“What kind of intercept?”
“Voice,” said Rozanov. “We heard your voice—”
Gabriel pointed the gun at Rozanov’s knee and fired. The Russian seized up in agony.
“We . . . had . . . a . . . source.”
“Where?”
“Inside . . . the . . . Office.”
Gabriel fired a second shot into the same knee. “You’d better tell me the truth, Alexei. Otherwise, I’m going to waste all my bullets turning your knee to mush.”
“Source,” whispered Rozanov.
“Yes, I know. You had a source. But who was it?”
“He works . . .”
“Where does he work, Alexei?”
“MI6.”
“In what department?”
“Personnel and . . .”
“Personnel and Security?”
“Yes.”
“His name, Alexei. Tell me his name.”
“I can’t . . .”
“Tell me who he is, Alexei. Tell me so I can stop the pain.”
PART THREE
BANDIT COUNTRY
>
60
VAUXHALL CROSS, LONDON
APPROXIMATELY ONE HOUR AFTER the death of Alexei Rozanov, Graham Seymour received the first communication from his newest clandestine officer. It stated that the life of Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster was in mortal peril and intimated that Russian intelligence had recruited a spy inside MI6. It was, Seymour would later say, a rather auspicious way to begin a career.
Given the circumstances, Seymour thought it best to send a private plane. It collected Gabriel and Keller at Le Bourget in Paris and delivered them to London City Airport in the Docklands. An MI6 car then ferried them at high speed to Vauxhall Cross, where Seymour waited in a windowless room on the top floor, a phone to his ear. He hung up as Gabriel and Keller entered and scrutinized them for a moment with expressionless gray eyes.
“Is there audio?” he asked finally.
Gabriel drew his BlackBerry, cued the recording to the relevant passage, and pressed the PLAY icon.
“Where will it happen?”
“Guy’s Hospital in London.”
“When?”
“Three p.m. tomorrow.”
“And the target?”
“It’s the prime minister. Quinn and Katerina are going to kill Jonathan Lancaster tomorrow afternoon in London.”
Gabriel clicked PAUSE. Seymour stared at the phone.
“Alexei Rozanov?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Perhaps you should play it from the beginning.”
“Actually, I think we should start at the end.”
Gabriel recued the file and clicked PLAY a second time.
“His name, Alexei. Tell me his name.”
“Grrrrr . . .”
“Sorry, Alexei, but I didn’t catch that.”
“Grimes . . .”
“Is that his last name?”
“Yes.”
“And his first name, Alexei? Tell me his first name?”
“Arthur.”
“Arthur Grimes—is that his name?”
“Yes.”
“Arthur Grimes of the Personnel and Security department of MI6 is a paid agent of Russian intelligence?”
“Yes.”
Next there was something that sounded very much like a gunshot. Gabriel tapped the PAUSE icon. Seymour closed his eyes.
At nine that morning a team from the A1A Branch of MI5 broke into the warehouse at 22 Thames Road in the Barking section of East London. They found no vehicles of any kind and no visible evidence to suggest a bomb had been constructed on the premises. Simultaneously, a second MI5 team entered the Internet café on Lord Street in Fleetwood. In a small stroke of good fortune, one of the employees on duty had worked the previous evening and recalled seeing a man and woman matching the descriptions of Quinn and Katerina. The employee also recalled which computer the couple had used. The MI5 team impounded the machine and loaded it onto a Royal Navy helicopter. It was expected to arrive in London no later than noon. Amanda Wallace had insisted that MI5’s computer lab handle the forensic search. Graham Seymour, for political reasons, had agreed to her demand.
“Where’s Grimes?” asked Gabriel.
“He entered the building a few minutes ago. A team is tearing apart his flat as we speak. It’s a rather tricky business. Grimes is their immediate superior.”
“How deep is his knowledge?”
“He’s involved in the vetting process for current and prospective MI6 officers.” Seymour glanced at Keller. “In fact, I spoke to him a few days ago about a special project that we would be undertaking soon.”
“Me?” asked Keller.
Seymour nodded. “Grimes also investigates allegations of security breaches, which means he’s in a perfect position to protect other Russian moles or spies. If he’s really on the SVR’s payroll, it’s going to be the biggest scandal for Western intelligence since Aldrich Ames.”
“Which is why you didn’t mention any of this to Amanda Wallace.”
Seymour said nothing.
“Would Grimes have known that Keller and I were staying at Wormwood Cottage?”
“He generally doesn’t deal with safe houses, but he certainly knows when someone important is staying in one of them. In any case,” Seymour added, “we’ll know in a few minutes whether he was the source of the leak.”
“How?”
“Yuri Volkov is going to tell us.”
“Who’s Volkov?”
“He’s the deputy SVR rezident at the Russian Embassy. MI5 is convinced he met with an asset yesterday afternoon on the Underground. One of my men is at Thames House reviewing the footage now. In fact—”
The phone interrupted Seymour. He lifted the receiver and listened in silence for a few seconds. Then he killed the connection and placed a call of his own.
“Don’t let him out of your sight. Not for a minute. If he goes to the gents, you go, too.”
Seymour hung up the phone and looked at Gabriel and Keller.
“I should have retired when I had the chance.”
“That would have been a big mistake,” said Keller.
“Why?”
“Because you would have lost your chance to get Quinn.”
“I’m not sure I want another chance. After all,” Seymour added, “I haven’t fared well against him. In fact, the score is two games to nil in his favor.”
A heavy silence fell over the windowless room. Seymour and Keller were both staring at the phone. Gabriel was staring at the clock.
“How long do you intend to wait, Graham?”
“Before what?”
“Before you let me have a quiet word with Arthur Grimes.”
“You’re not going anywhere near him. No one is,” Seymour added. “Not for a long time. It might be months before we’re ready to start interrogating him.”
“We don’t have months, Graham. We have until three o’clock.”
“There was no bomb in that warehouse in Barking.”
“Not exactly encouraging news.”
Seymour studied the clock. “We’ll give the MI5 computer lab until two p.m. to locate that e-mail exchange. If they haven’t found it by then, we’ll confront Grimes.”
“What do you intend to ask him?”
“I’ll start with his train ride with Yuri Volkov.”
“And do you know what he’ll say to you?”
“No.”
“Yuri who.”
“You’re a fatalistic bastard.”
“I know,” said Gabriel. “It prevents me from being disappointed later.”
61
BRISTOL, ENGLAND
AT NINE O’CLOCK THAT MORNING, BBC Radio 4 broadcast its first account of the incident in Hamburg. The report was brief and fragmentary. Two men had been shot to death, two others were missing. The dead men were both Russians; of the missing men little was known. The German chancellor was said to be deeply concerned. The Kremlin was said to be outraged. These days, it usually was.
Quinn and Katerina heard the report while driving along the M5 north of Birmingham. An hour later they listened to an update while sitting outside Marks & Spencer at the Cribbs Causeway Retail Park in Bristol. The ten o’clock version contained a single new piece of information. According to the German police, the dead men were both carrying diplomatic passports. Katerina switched off the radio as a BBC foreign policy specialist was explaining how the incident threatened to spiral into a full-fledged crisis.
“Now we know why Allon faked his own death,” she said.
“Why would Alexei have been in Hamburg last night?”
“Maybe he was deceived into going there.”
“By whom?”
“Allon, of course. He’s probably interrogating Alexei right now. Or maybe Alexei’s already dead. Either way, we have to assume that Allon knows where we are. Which means we have to leave England immediately.”
Quinn made no reply.
“What if I can prove Alexei was in that car?” asked Katerina.
“Another e-mail to Moscow Ce
nter?”
She nodded.
“Not a chance.”
She glanced around at the other vehicles in the car park. “They could be watching us right now.”
“They aren’t.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve been fighting them for a long time, Katerina. I’m sure.”
She didn’t appear convinced. “I’m not a jihadist, Eamon. I didn’t come here to die. Get me out of England. We’ll make contact with the Center and arrange a payment for my safe return.”
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” said Quinn. “But we have to take care of one piece of business first.”
Katerina watched a pair of women walking toward the entrance of Marks & Spencer.
“Why are we here?” she asked.
“We’re going to do some shopping.”
“And then?”
“We’re going to take a walk.”
62
10 DOWNING STREET
GRAHAM SEYMOUR LEFT VAUXHALL CROSS shortly after noon to brief Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster at 10 Downing Street. He told Lancaster that Eamon Quinn was almost certainly back in the country and plotting another attack—perhaps on Guy’s Hospital during the prime minister’s appearance, perhaps on another target. They would know more, explained Seymour, once MI5’s lab completed its assault on the computer from Fleetwood. He made no mention of Arthur Grimes and his covert encounter with Yuri Volkov of the Russian Embassy. He believed in doling out bad news in small portions.
“You just missed Amanda,” the prime minister said. “She advised me to cancel my visit to Guy’s Hospital. She also thought it might be a good idea for me to remain locked inside Number Ten until Quinn is captured.”
“Amanda is a wise woman.”
“When she agrees with you.” The prime minister smiled. “It’s good to see you two are playing nicely together.” He paused, then asked, “You are playing nicely, aren’t you, Graham?”