The next waves that broke across the sand were red with the blood of the dead MI6 security man. Katerina calmly reloaded the Skorpion and climbed the steep path to the car park. It was deserted except for the Renault. She slid behind the wheel, started the engine, and headed down the drive toward the cottage.
66
THAMES HOUSE, LONDON
NOTHING IN THE LANGUAGE OF the exchange was outwardly suspicious, but to the experienced eye of the MI5 tech it stank of inauthenticity. So did the addresses of the two participants. He showed the printout to his superior, and the superior in turn brought it to the attention of Miles Kent. Kent was most intrigued by a street address that appeared in the final e-mail. The address seemed familiar, so he quickly ran it through an MI5 database and there discovered an alarming match. His next stop was the operations room where Amanda Wallace was monitoring the prime minister’s visit to Guy’s Hospital. He placed the printout in front of her. Amanda read it and frowned.
“What does it mean?”
“Look at the address carefully.”
Amanda did. “Isn’t that the cottage where Allon used to live?”
Kent nodded.
“Who lives there now?”
“You should probably ask Graham Seymour.”
Amanda reached for the phone.
Five seconds later, on the opposite bank of the Thames, in yet another operations room, Graham Seymour picked up the call.
“What do you have?”
“A problem.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Is anyone staying at Allon’s cottage in West Cornwall?”
Seymour hesitated, then said, “I’m sorry, Amanda, but it’s not something I can talk about.”
“My God,” she whispered gravely. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
The cottage was officially designated an MI6 safe facility, so it contained no active telephone line. Nor had its current occupant been entrusted with a mobile, lest she say something in an unguarded moment to divulge her whereabouts to her enemies. All attempts to contact her guardians proved unsuccessful. Their phones rang unanswered. Their radios crackled with no response.
One call, however, was answered without delay. It was the call that Graham Seymour placed to Gabriel’s mobile at 3:17 p.m. Gabriel was in the auditorium at Guy’s Hospital, where the prime minister was about to offer a remedy to the ills facing Britain’s sacred government-run health care system. Seymour was watching a live feed of the event on the video screens in the operations room. He spoke with more calm than he would have thought possible, given the circumstances.
“I’m afraid the prime minister wasn’t the target. There’s a helicopter waiting for you and Keller on the pad in Battersea. The Metropolitan Police will give you a ride over.”
The call went dead. Seymour replaced the receiver and stared at the screen as two men rushed from the auditorium.
67
WEST CORNWALL
MADELINE HART NEVER HEARD the gunshots, only the sharp crack of splintering wood. And then she had seen the man rushing through the broken front door of the cottage, an ugly-looking submachine gun in his hands. He had driven his fist into her abdomen—a brutal blow that had left her incapable of uttering a sound or drawing a breath—and as she lay writhing he had bound her hands and mouth with tape and covered her head in a hood of black serge cloth. Even so, she became aware of the presence of a second intruder, smaller than the first, lighter in step. Together they wrenched her to her feet and marched her gasping across her room with a view. Outside, a phone rang unanswered—the phone, she assumed, of one of her security guards. The intruders forced her into the trunk of a car and slammed the hatch with a coffin finality. She heard tires crunching over gravel and, faintly, waves breaking in the cove. Then the sea abandoned her and there was only the rush of rubber over asphalt. And voices. Two voices, one a man, the other a woman. The man was almost certainly from Ireland, but the woman’s muddled accent did not betray her homeland. Madeline was certain of only one thing. She had heard the voice somewhere before.
She could not fathom the direction they were driving, only that the road was of moderate quality. It was a B road, she thought. Not that it mattered much; her knowledge of Cornwall’s geography was limited by the fact that she had remained a virtual prisoner of Gabriel’s cottage. Yes, there was the occasional ride down to Lizard Point for tea and scones at the café atop the cliffs, but for the most part she ventured no farther than the beach in Gunwalloe Cove. A man from MI6 headquarters in London came out to Cornwall regularly to brief her about her security situation—or, as he put it, to read her the riot act. His presentation rarely varied. Her defection, he said, had been a grave embarrassment to the Kremlin. It was only a matter of time before the Russians attempted to correct the situation.
Apparently that time had come. Madeline supposed her abduction was linked to the attempt on Gabriel’s life. The man with the Irish accent was undoubtedly Eamon Quinn. And the woman? Madeline listened now to the low murmur of her voice and the peculiar blend of German, British, and Russian accents. Then she closed her eyes and saw two girls sitting in a park in a movie-set English village. Two girls who had been taken from their mothers and raised by wolves. Two girls who one day would be sent into the world to spy for a country they had never truly known. Now it seemed that someone at Moscow Center had dispatched one of the girls to kill the other. Only a Russian could be so cruel.
Madeline had only the thinnest grasp on time, but she reckoned that twenty minutes elapsed before the car stopped. The engine died, the hatch rose, and two pairs of hands lifted her upright—one male, the other discernibly female. The air was sharp and iodized, the ground beneath her feet rocky and unstable. She could hear the sea and, overhead, the cry of circling gulls. As they moved closer to the water’s edge, an engine fired and she smelled smoke. They splashed her through a foot of water and forced her aboard a small craft. Instantly, the craft came about and, rising on an approaching wave, headed out to sea. Hooded and bound, Madeline listened to the rotor churning beneath the surface of the water. You’re going to die, it seemed to be saying. You’re already dead.
68
GUNWALLOE COVE, CORNWALL
THE HELICOPTER WAITING ON THE pad at Battersea was a Westland Sea King transport with Rolls-Royce Gnome turboshaft engines. It bore Gabriel and Keller across the width of southern England at 110 knots, just shy of its top speed. They reached Plymouth at six, and a few minutes later Gabriel spotted the lighthouse at Lizard Point. The pilot wanted to set down at Culdrose, but Gabriel prevailed upon him to go straight to Gunwalloe instead. As they passed over the cottage, the rotating blue lights of police cruisers flashed in the drive and along the road from the Lamb and Flag. Light shone in the cove, too. It was crime-scene white. Gabriel felt suddenly ill. His beloved Cornish sanctuary, the place where he had found peace and restoration after some of his most difficult operations, was now a place of death.
The pilot dropped Gabriel and Keller at the northern end of the cove. They came down the tide line at a sprint and stopped at the crime-scene lamps. In their harsh downward glow lay the corpse of a man. He had been shot repeatedly in the chest. The tight dispersal suggested the gunman had been well trained. Or perhaps, thought Gabriel, the killer had been a woman. He looked up at the four men standing over the body. Two were wearing the uniform of the Devon and Cornwall Police. The other two were plainclothes detectives from the Major Crime Branch. Gabriel wondered how long they’d been present. Long enough, he thought, to light up the cove like a football stadium at night.
“Do you really have to use those arc lamps? It’s not as if he’s going anywhere.”
“Who’s asking?” replied one of the detectives.
“MI6,” said Keller quietly. It was the first time he had identified himself as an employee of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and the effect on his audience was instantaneous.
“I’ll need to see some identification,” said the detective.
Keller pointed toward the Sea King at the end of the cove and said, “That’s my identification. Now do what the man says and turn off the damn lights.”
One of the uniformed officers turned off the arc lamps.
“Now tell the cruisers to kill their flashers.”
The same officer gave the order over his radio. Gabriel looked up toward the cottage and saw the blue lights go dark. Then he stared down at the corpse lying at his feet.
“Where did you find him?”
“Are you MI6, too?” asked the plainclothes detective.
“Answer his question,” snapped Keller.
“He was at the water’s edge.”
“He’d been fishing?” asked Gabriel.
“How did you know?”
“Lucky guess.”
The detective turned and pointed toward the cliffs. “The shooter was over there. We found twenty shell casings.” He looked down at the body. “Obviously, most of them found their target. He was probably dead before he hit the water.”
“Any witnesses?”
“None that have come forward.”
“What about footprints near the shell casings.”
The detective nodded. “Whoever did the shooting was wearing hiking boots.”
“What size?”
“Small.”
“Was it a woman?”
“Could have been.”
Without another word, Gabriel led Keller up the footpath to the cottage. They entered through the French doors off the terrace. Gabriel’s living room had been converted into a field command post. The broken front door hung ajar on one hinge, and through the opening he observed two more bodies lying in the drive. A tall detective approached and introduced himself as DI Frazier. Gabriel accepted the detective’s hand, but did not identify himself. Neither did Keller.
“Which one of you is MI6?” asked the DI.
Gabriel looked at Keller.
“And you?” the detective asked Gabriel.
“He’s a friend of the service,” said Keller.
The detective’s disdain for irregulars was written clearly on his face. “We’ve got four fatalities that we know of,” he said. “One in the cove, two outside the cottage, and a fourth on the coastal path. He was hit once in the chest and once in the head. Never had a chance to draw his sidearm. The ones in the drive were hit multiple times, like the bloke in the cove.”
“And the woman who lives here?” asked Gabriel.
“She’s unaccounted for.”
The detective walked over to Gabriel’s easel, upon which he had hung a map of West Cornwall. “We have two witnesses from the village who noticed a Renault driving at high speed shortly after three this afternoon. The car was headed north. We’ve established roadblocks here, here, and here,” he added, touching the map in three places. “Neither witness managed to see the driver, but both said the passenger was a woman.”
“Your witnesses are correct,” said Gabriel.
The detective turned away from the map. “Who is she?”
“An assassin from Russian intelligence.”
“And the man driving the car?”
“He used to be the Real IRA’s best bomb maker, which means you’re wasting time with those roadblocks. You need to be concentrating your resources on the west coast. You should also be checking the trunk of every car rolling onto the Irish ferries tonight.”
“Does the Real IRA man have a name?”
“Eamon Quinn.”
“And the Russian?”
“Her name is Katerina. But in all likelihood, she’s posing as a German. Don’t be fooled by her appearance,” added Gabriel. “She put twenty rounds through the heart of that security guard in the cove.”
“And the woman they kidnapped?”
“It’s not important who she is. She’ll be the one with a bag over her head.”
The detective turned again and studied the map. “Do you know how long the Cornish coast is?”
“More than four hundred miles,” answered Gabriel, “with dozens of small coves. Which is why it was a smuggler’s paradise.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“There’s tea in the pantry,” said Gabriel. “And a sleeve of McVitie’s, too.”
69
GUNWALLOE COVE, CORNWALL
AT EIGHT THAT EVENING THEY brought the body up from the cove by torchlight and laid it out in the drive next to the others. The dead did not remain there long; within an hour a procession of vans arrived to transport them to the medical examiner’s office in Exeter. There a highly trained professional would declare the obvious, that four men of secret employment had perished of bullet wounds to their vital organs. Or perhaps, thought Gabriel, the medical examiner would never see the bodies. Perhaps Graham Seymour and Amanda Wallace would manage to sweep the whole bloody mess under the rug. Quinn had managed to deliver yet another scandal to the doorstep of British intelligence—a scandal that would have been avoided if the MI5 computer lab had found an e-mail exchange a few minutes earlier than it had. Gabriel couldn’t help but feel he bore some of the responsibility. None of it would have happened, he thought, if he hadn’t laid a copy of A Room with a View on the lap of a beautiful young woman in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
I believe this belongs to you . . .
There would be time for recriminations later. For now, finding Madeline was Gabriel’s only concern. The Devon and Cornwall Police were watching every beach and cove in the region—anywhere a small craft might put ashore. In addition, Graham Seymour had quietly asked the Coast Guard to step up patrols along the southwest of England. All prudent steps, thought Gabriel, but probably too little too late. Quinn was gone. And so was Madeline. But why kidnap her? Why not leave her dead with her guardians as a warning to any other Russian spies pondering defection?
Gabriel couldn’t bear to be inside the cottage—not with the police making a mess of the place, not with the bullet holes in the door and the memories stalking him at every turn—so he and Keller sat outside on the terrace, bundled in their coats. Gabriel watched the lights of a big freighter far out in the Atlantic and wondered whether Madeline was on it. Keller smoked a cigarette and stared down at the Sea King. No one intruded on their silence until shortly after ten, when the detective informed them a Renault Scénic had been found at the edge of a remote cove near West Pentire, on Cornwall’s northern coast. The vehicle had been empty except for a shopping bag from Marks & Spencer.
“I don’t suppose there was a receipt?” asked Gabriel.
“Afraid not.” The detective was silent for a moment. “My DCI has been in touch with the Home Office,” he said finally. “I know who you are.”
“Then you’ll accept our apologies for the way we spoke to your men earlier.”
“None necessary. But you may want to remove any valuables from the cottage before you leave. Apparently, MI6 is sending a team to clean out the place.”
“Ask them to handle my easel with care,” said Gabriel. “It has sentimental value.”
The detective withdrew, leaving Gabriel and Keller alone. The lights of the freighter had disappeared into the night.
“Where do you suppose he took her?” asked Keller.
“Somewhere he feels comfortable. Somewhere he knows the terrain and the players.” Gabriel looked at Keller. “Know any place like that?”
“Unfortunately, only one.”
“Bandit Country?”
Keller nodded. “And if he manages to get her there, he’ll have a distinct home-field advantage.”
“We have an advantage, too, Christopher.”
“What’s that?”
“Number Eight Stratford Gardens.”
Keller was staring at the Sea King again. “Have you considered the possibility that this is exactly what Quinn wants?”
“Another shot at us?”
“Yes.”
“Does it make a difference?”
“No,” said Keller. ?
??But it might not be something you should be getting involved in. After all . . .”
Keller left the thought unfinished because it was obvious that Gabriel was no longer listening. He had pulled his BlackBerry from his pocket and was in the process of dialing Graham Seymour at Vauxhall Cross. Their conversation was brief, two minutes, no more. Then Gabriel returned the phone to his pocket and pointed toward the cove, where thirty seconds later the turboshaft engine of the Sea King began to whine. Slowly, he rose to his feet and followed Keller numbly down the path to the beach. He saw the cottage for the last time as he had seen it for the first, from a mile out to sea, knowing he would never set foot there again. Quinn had destroyed it for him, as surely as he had helped Tariq destroy Leah and Dani. It was personal now, he thought. And it was going to be very messy.
70
COUNTY DOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND
AT THAT SAME MOMENT the Catherine May, a Vigilante 33 commercial fishing vessel, was making twenty-six knots through St. George’s Channel. Jack Delaney, a former member of the IRA who specialized in weapons smuggling and the movement of explosive devices, was at the helm. Delaney’s younger brother Connor was leaning in the companionway, smoking a cigarette. By three in the morning they were due east of Dublin, and by five they had reached the mouth of Carlingford Lough, the glacial inlet that forms the border between the Republic of Ireland and Ulster. The ancient fishing port of Ardglass was approximately twenty miles to the north. Quinn waited until he could see the first flash of the Ardglass lighthouse before firing up his mobile. He composed a brief text message and with considerable reluctance fired it insecurely into the ether. Ten seconds later came the reply.
“Shit,” said Quinn.
“What’s the problem?” asked Jack Delaney.
“Ardglass is too hot for us to put in there.”
“What about Kilkeel?”
Kilkeel was a fishing port located about thirty miles to the south of Ardglass. It was a majority Protestant town where loyalist sentiment ran deep. Quinn suggested it in a second text. When the reply came a few seconds later, he looked at Delaney and shook his head.