84
MOUNT HERZL, JERUSALEM
DURING THE DRIVE FROM the Mount of Olives, a gentle snow began to fall upon God’s fractured city on a hill. It coated the tiny circular drive of the Mount Herzl Psychiatric Hospital and whitened the limbs of the stone pine in the walled garden. Inside the clinic, Leah watched the snow vacantly from the windows of the common room. She was seated in her wheelchair. Her hair was gray and cut institutionally short; her hands were twisted and white with scar tissue. Her doctor, a rabbinical-looking man with a round face and a wondrous beard of many colors, had cleared the room of other patients. He seemed not entirely surprised to learn that Gabriel was still alive. He had been caring for Leah for more than ten years. He knew things about the legend others did not.
“You should have alerted me that it was all a ruse,” the doctor said. “We could have done something to shield her. As you might expect, your death caused quite a stir.”
“There wasn’t time.”
“I’m sure you had good reason,” the doctor said reproachfully.
“I did.” Gabriel allowed a few seconds to pass to take the sharp edge off the conversation. “I never know how much she understands.”
“She knows more than you realize. We had a rough few days.”
“And now?”
“She’s better, but you have to be careful with her.” He shook Gabriel’s hand. “Take as much time as you want. I’ll be in my office if you need anything.”
When the doctor was gone, Gabriel moved quietly across the limestone tiles of the common room. A chair had been placed at Leah’s side. She was still watching the snow. But upon what city was it falling? Was she in Jerusalem at that moment? Or was she trapped in the past? Leah suffered from a particularly acute combination of post-traumatic stress disorder and psychotic depression. In her watery memory, time was elusive. Gabriel never quite knew which Leah he would encounter. One minute she could be the stunningly gifted painter he had fallen in love with at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. The next she could present herself as the mature mother of a beautiful young boy who had insisted on accompanying her husband on a work trip to Vienna.
For several minutes she watched the snow, unblinking. Perhaps she was unaware of his presence. Or perhaps she was punishing him for allowing her to think that he was dead. Finally, her head turned and her eyes traveled over him, as though she were searching for a lost object in the cluttered closets of her memory.
“Gabriel?” she asked.
“Yes, Leah.”
“Are you real, my love? Or am I hallucinating?”
“I’m real.”
“Where are we?”
“Jerusalem.”
Her head turned and she watched the snow. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Yes, Leah.”
“The snow absolves Vienna of its sins. Snow falls on Vienna while the missiles rain on Tel Aviv.” She came back to him. “I hear them at night,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“The missiles.”
“You’re safe here, Leah.”
“I want to talk to my mother. I want to hear the sound of my mother’s voice.”
“We’ll call her.”
“Make sure Dani is buckled into his seat. The streets are slippery.”
“He’s fine, Leah.”
She looked down at his hands and noticed smudges of paint. It seemed to wrench her back to the present. “You’ve been working?” she asked.
“A little.”
“Something important?”
He swallowed hard and said, “A nursery, Leah.”
“For your children?”
He nodded.
“Have they been born yet?”
“Soon,” he said.
“A boy and a girl?”
“Yes, Leah.”
“What are you going to call the girl?”
“She’ll be called Irene.”
“Irene is your mother’s name.”
“That’s right.”
“She’s dead, your mother?”
“A long time ago.”
“And the boy? What will you name the boy?”
Gabriel hesitated, then said, “The boy will be named Raphael.”
“The angel of healing.” She smiled and asked, “Are you healed, Gabriel?”
“Not quite.”
“Nor am I.”
She looked up at the television, puzzlement on her face. Gabriel held her hand. The scar tissue made it feel cold and firm. It was like a patch of bare canvas. He longed to retouch it but could not. Leah was the one thing in the world he could not restore.
“Are you dead?” she asked suddenly.
“No, Leah. I’m here with you.”
“The television said you were killed in London.”
“It was something we had to say.”
“Why?”
“It’s not important.”
“You always say that, my love.”
“Do I?”
“Only when it really is.” Her eyes settled on him. “Where were you?”
“I was looking for the man who helped Tariq build the bomb.”
“Did you find him?”
“Almost.”
She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “It was a long time ago, Gabriel. And it won’t change a thing. I’ll still be the way I am. And you’ll still be married to another woman.”
Gabriel couldn’t bear her accusatory stare any longer, so he watched the snow instead. After a few seconds she joined him.
“You’ll let me see them, won’t you, Gabriel?”
“As soon as I can.”
“And you’ll take good care of them, especially the boy?”
“Of course.”
Her eyes widened suddenly. “I want to hear the sound of my mother’s voice.”
“So do I.”
“Make sure Dani is buckled into his car seat tightly.”
“I will,” said Gabriel. “The streets are slippery.”
During the drive back to Narkiss Street, Gabriel received a text message from Chiara requesting his estimated time of arrival. He didn’t bother to respond because he was just around the corner. He hurried up the garden walk, leaving a trail of telltale size-ten footprints in the undisturbed layer of snow, and climbed the stairs to his apartment. Entering, he saw the suitcase he had so carefully packed standing in the entrance hall. Chiara was seated on the couch, dressed and coated, singing softly to herself as she leafed through a glossy magazine.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Gabriel asked.
“I thought it would be a nice surprise.”
“I hate surprises.”
“I know.” She smiled beautifully.
“What happened?”
“I wasn’t feeling well this afternoon, so I called the doctor. He thought we should get it over with.”
“When?”
“Tonight, darling. We need to get to the hospital.”
Gabriel stood with the stillness of a bronze statue.
“This is the part where you help me to my feet,” said Chiara.
“Oh, yes, of course.”
“And don’t forget the bag.”
“Wait . . . what?”
“The suitcase, darling. I’ll need my things at the hospital.”
“Yes, the hospital.”
Gabriel helped Chiara down the stairs and across the front walk, all the while flogging himself for having neglected to factor the possibility of snow into his planning. In the back of the SUV, she leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes to rest. Gabriel inhaled the intoxicating scent of vanilla and watched the snow dancing against the glass. It was beautiful, he thought. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
85
BUENOS AIRES
IT WASN’T AS IF THEY had nothing better do that spring. After all, even the most casual observer—the historically brain-dead, as Graham Seymour often described them in his darker moments—
realized the world was wobbling dangerously out of control. Strapped for resources, Seymour assigned only one officer to the task. It didn’t matter; one officer was all he needed. He gave the man a briefcase full of cash and considerable operational leeway. The briefcase came from a shop in Jermyn Street. The money was American, for in the nether regions of the espionage world, dollars remained the reserve currency.
He traveled under many names that spring, none of them his own. In fact, at that particular point of his life and career, he really didn’t have a name. His parents, with whom he had recently been reunited, referred to him by the name they had given him at birth. At work, however, he was known only by a four-digit numeric cipher. His flat in Chelsea was officially owned by a company that did not exist. He had set foot there only once.
His search took him to many dangerous places, which was of no consequence, for he was a dangerous man himself. He spent several days in Dublin at the perilous intersection of drugs and rebellion, and then popped into Lisbon on the off chance his quarry’s connection to the city was more than merely cosmetic. A nasty rumor took him to a godforsaken village in Belarus; an intercepted e-mail, to Istanbul. There he met a source who claimed to have seen the target in an ISIS-controlled region of Syria. With London’s reluctant blessing, he crossed the border on foot and, disguised as an Arab, made his way to the house where the target was said to be living. The house was empty, save for a few snippets of wiring and a notebook that contained several diagrams for bombs. He pocketed the notebook and returned to Turkey. Along the way he saw images of brutality that he would not soon forget.
Late February saw him in Mexico City, where a bribe produced a lead that sent him to Panama. He spent a week there watching an empty condominium on the Playa Farallón. Then, on a hunch, he flew to Rio de Janeiro, where a plastic surgeon with a dubious clientele admitted he had recently altered the target’s appearance. According to the doctor, the patient claimed he was living in Bogotá, but a visit there turned up nothing but a distraught woman who might or might not have been carrying his child. The woman suggested he look in Buenos Aires, which he did. And it was there, on a cool afternoon in mid-April, that an old debt came due.
He was cooking at a restaurant called Brasserie Petanque, in the southern barrio of San Telmo. His apartment was around the corner, on the third floor of a building that looked as though it had been plucked from the boulevard Saint-Germain. Across the street was a café where Keller sat drinking coffee at a table on the pavement. He wore a brimmed hat and sunglasses; his hair had the healthy sheen of a man gone prematurely gray. He appeared to be reading a Spanish-language literary magazine. He was not.
He left a few pesos on the table, crossed the street, and entered the foyer of the apartment building. A tabby cat circled his feet while he read the name on the mailbox for Apartment 309. Upstairs, he found the door to the apartment locked. It was no matter; Keller had acquired a copy of the key from the building’s maintenance man for a bribe of five hundred dollars.
He drew his gun as he entered and closed the door. The apartment was small and sparsely furnished. Next to the bed was a pile of books and a shortwave radio. The books were thick, weighty, and learned. The radio was of a quality rarely seen any longer. Keller powered it on and raised the volume to a whisper. “My Funny Valentine” by Miles Davis. He smiled. He had come to the right place.
Keller switched off the radio and moved aside the curtain that shaded Quinn’s last remaining window on the world. And there he stood with the discipline of a close-observation specialist for the remainder of the afternoon. Finally, a man appeared at the café and sat at the same table Keller had vacated. He drank local beer and was dressed in local clothing. Even so, it was clear he was not a native of Argentina. Keller raised a miniature monocular telescope to his eye and studied the man’s face. The Brazilian had done a fine job, he thought. The man at the table was unrecognizable. The only thing that betrayed him was the way he handled his knife when the proprietor brought his steak. Quinn was a master technician, but he always did his best work with a knife.
Keller remained at the edge of the window with the miniature telescope pressed to his eye, watching, waiting, while Quinn consumed the last meal he would ever eat. When he was finished, he paid the proprietor and, rising, crossed the street. Keller slipped the miniature telescope into his pocket and stood in the entrance hall, the gun in his outstretched hands. After a moment he heard footfalls in the corridor and the crunch of a key entering the lock. Quinn never saw Keller’s face and never felt the two bullets—one for Elizabeth Conlin, the other for Dani Allon—that ended his life. For that much at least, Keller was sorry.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE ENGLISH SPY IS A WORK of entertainment and should be read as nothing more. The names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in the story are the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
There is indeed a lovely cottage at the southern end of the Gunwalloe fishing cove that has always reminded the author of Monet’s Customs Officer’s Cabin at Pourville, but to the best of my knowledge neither Gabriel Allon nor Madeline Hart have ever resided there. Nor should readers go searching for Gabriel at 16 Narkiss Street, as he and Chiara have their hands full at the moment. Reports from Jerusalem indicate that mother and children are doing fine. Father is another matter altogether. More on that in the next installment of the series.
Visitors to the northern English town of Fleetwood will search in vain for an Internet café opposite the chippy. There is no pub in Gunwalloe called Lamb and Flag, nor is there a bar in Crossmaglen called the Emerald, though there are several like it. Apologies to the management of Le Piment restaurant on the island of Saint Barthélemy for placing an IRA bomb maker in their small but glorious kitchen. Apologies as well to Die Bank restaurant in Hamburg, the InterContinental Hotel in Vienna, and, especially, the Kempinski Hotel in Berlin. Room 518 must have been quite a mess.
For the record, I am aware that the headquarters of Israel’s secret intelligence service is no longer located on King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv. My fictitious service continues to reside there, in part because I like the name better than that of the current location, which I will not mention in print. Also, I have been asked many times whether Don Anton Orsati is based on a real individual. He is not. The don, his valley, and his unique business enterprise were all invented by the author.
The English Spy is the fourth Gabriel Allon adventure to feature the don’s best assassin: former SAS commando Christopher Keller. The novel ends in the place where Keller’s story began, in the dangerous green hills of South Armagh. During the worst of the long and bloody war for Northern Ireland, the region truly was the most dangerous place in the world to wear the uniform of a soldier or police officer. The largest single loss of life occurred on August 27, 1979, when two large roadside bombs killed eighteen British soldiers at Warrenpoint. The attack occurred just hours after Lord Mountbatten, a British statesman and relative of Queen Elizabeth II, was killed by an IRA bomb concealed aboard his fishing boat—an incident that suggested the opening passages of The English Spy. Clearly, I borrowed much from the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, when constructing my fictitious princess, but in no way was it my intention to suggest Diana’s death was a murder. She died in a Paris tunnel because an intoxicated man was behind the wheel of her car, not as a result of an international conspiracy.
The Republic of Ireland’s long struggle against illegal narcotics has been well documented. Less well known, however, is the role played in the drug trade by elements of the Real IRA, the dissident republican terrorist group formed in 1997. The organization, which included several members of the IRA’s South Armagh Brigade, carried out a series of devastating bombings in the spring and summer of 1998, as Northern Ireland was moving tentatively toward peace. The deadliest was the bombing of the market town of
Omagh on August 15 that killed twenty-nine people and left more than two hundred others wounded. Specific details of the attack that appear in the novel are accurate, though I granted myself license when portraying the actions of my fictitious British spymaster, Graham Seymour. Eamon Quinn and Liam Walsh were not in the bomb car that day, as they are inventions of the author.
At the time of this writing, the real bombers still have not been officially identified. Only they know why they parked the bomb car in the wrong place on Lower Market Street. And only they know why they allowed inaccurate warnings to be passed on to the media and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, thus creating the circumstances for a catastrophic loss of innocent life. Surely the police and intelligence services of Ireland and the United Kingdom know their names. Yet seventeen years after the bombing, no one has been convicted for the largest mass murder in British or Irish history. In June 2009 a judge in Northern Ireland ordered four men—Michael McKevitt, Liam Campbell, Colm Murphy, and Seamus Daly—to pay one and a half million pounds to the families of the Omagh victims. To date, no money has changed hands. In April 2014 Seamus Daly was arrested at a shopping center in South Armagh, where he was living openly, and charged with twenty-nine counts of murder. If past cases are any guide, the chances of a successful prosecution are remote. In 2002 Ireland’s Special Criminal Court convicted Colm Murphy of conspiracy in the bombing, only to see its verdict overturned on appeal. Murphy’s nephew faced trial in Northern Ireland in 2006 but was acquitted.
In the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement, British intelligence learned that highly skilled IRA bomb makers were selling their expertise on the open market. Among the countries where former IRA terrorists plied their deadly trade was the Islamic Republic of Iran. Historian Gordon Thomas, in his history of MI6 entitled Secret Wars, wrote that a delegation of IRA terrorists traveled secretly to Tehran in 2006 to help Iran build an antitank weapon for its Lebanese client Hezbollah—a weapon that could create a fireball capable of traveling a thousand feet per second. Hezbollah used the weapon against Israeli tanks and armored vehicles, but British soldiers serving in Iraq also found themselves the targets of IRA-developed technology. In 2005 eight British soldiers were killed in Basra by a sophisticated roadside bomb that was identical to devices used by the IRA in South Armagh. Counterterrorism experts speculated that the blueprints for the weapon reached Iraq as a result of the IRA’s long association with the PLO. Both organizations enjoyed the patronage of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and trained at his infamous desert camps, where they shared knowledge and resources. Libya did indeed supply virtually all of the Semtex used by the IRA during the war for Northern Ireland.