The English Girl: A Novel (14 page)
LONDON
I
t was a few minutes after one in the morning by the time Gabriel finally departed Downing Street. Graham Seymour offered to drive him, but he wanted to walk; it had been many months since he had been in London, and he thought the damp night air would do him good. He slipped out the back security gate along Horse Guards Road and headed westward through the empty parks to Knightsbridge. Then he made his way along Brompton Road to South Kensington. The street number of his destination was tucked away in the drawers of his prodigious memory: 59 Victoria Road, the last known British address of an SAS deserter and professional assassin named Christopher Keller.
It was a stout little house, with a wrought-iron gate and a fine flight of steps rising to a white front door. Flowers bloomed in the tiny forecourt, and in the window of the drawing room a single light burned. The curtain was parted a few inches; through the gap Gabriel could see a man, Dr. Robert Keller, sitting upright in a wing chair—reading or sleeping, it was impossible to know. He was a bit younger than Shamron but, even so, not a man with long to live. For twenty-five years he had suffered under the belief that his son was dead, a pain that Gabriel knew only too well. It was a cruel thing that Keller had done to his parents, but it was not Gabriel’s place to make it right. And so he stood alone in the empty street, hoping the old man could somehow feel his presence. And in his thoughts he told him that his son was a flawed man who had done evil things for money, but that he was also decent and honorable and brave and still very much alive.
After a moment the light was extinguished and Keller’s father disappeared from view. Gabriel turned and made his way to Kensington Road. As he was nearing Queen’s Gate, a motorcycle swept past him on the right. He had seen the bike a few minutes earlier as he was crossing Sloane Street, and a few minutes before that as he was leaving Downing Street. He had assumed then that the figure riding it was an MI5 watcher. But now, as he scrutinized the supple line of the back and the generous curve of the hips, he no longer believed that to be the case.
He continued eastward along the edge of Hyde Park, watching the taillight of the bike grow smaller, confident he would see it again soon. He did not have to wait long—two minutes, perhaps less. That was when he glimpsed it speeding directly toward him. This time, instead of passing him by, it swung a U-turn around a traffic pylon and stopped. Gabriel eased his leg over the seat and clasped his arms around the narrow waist. As the bike shot forward, he inhaled the familiar scent of vanilla and softly stroked the underside of a warm, rounded breast. He closed his eyes, at peace for the first time in seven days.
T
he flat was located in an ugly postwar building on Bayswater Road. It had been an Office safe flat once, but inside King Saul Boulevard—and MI5, too, for that matter—it was now known as Gabriel Allon’s London pied-à-terre. Entering, he hung the key on the little hook just inside the kitchen door and opened the refrigerator. Inside was a carton of fresh milk, along with a crate of eggs, a lump of Parmesan cheese, mushrooms, herbs, and a bottle of Gabriel’s favorite pinot grigio.
“The cupboard was bare when I arrived,” said Chiara, “so I picked up a few things from that market around the corner. I was hoping we might have dinner together.”
“When did you get in?”
“About an hour after you.”
“How did you manage that?”
“I was in the neighborhood.”
Gabriel looked at her seriously. “What neighborhood?”
“France,” she answered without hesitation. “A farmhouse not far from Cherbourg, to be precise. Four bedrooms, an eat-in kitchen, lovely views of the Channel.”
“You got yourself assigned to the reception team?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“How was it exactly?”
“Ari did it for me.”
“Whose idea was it?”
“His.”
“Oh, really?”
“He thought I was perfect for the job, and I couldn’t argue with him. After all, it’s not as if I don’t have some idea of what it’s like to be kidnapped and held for ransom.”
“Which is exactly why I wouldn’t have let you anywhere near her.”
“It was a long time ago, darling.”
“Not that long.”
“It seems like another lifetime. In fact, sometimes it seems like it never happened at all.”
She closed the refrigerator door and kissed Gabriel softly. Her leather jacket still held the cold of the night ride across London, but her lips were warm.
“We waited all day for you to arrive,” she said, kissing him again. “The operations desk finally sent us a message saying you’d boarded a British Airways flight from Marseilles to London.”
“That’s funny, but I don’t remember mentioning my travel plans to the Operations Desk.”
“They watch your credit cards, darling—you know that. They had a team from London Station waiting at Heathrow. They saw you leave with Nigel Whitcombe. And then they saw you entering Downing Street through the back door.”
“I was slightly disappointed we didn’t go through the front, but under the circumstances it was probably for the best.”
“What happened in France?”
“Things didn’t go according to plan.”
“So what now?”
“Britain’s prime minister is about to make someone a very rich man.”
“How rich?”
“Ten million euros rich.”
“So crime pays after all.”
“It usually does. That’s why there are so many criminals.”
Chiara withdrew from Gabriel and removed her coat. She was wearing a tight black sweater with a roll neck. She had arranged her hair to fit inside the helmet. Now, with her eyes fixed warily on Gabriel, she removed several clasps and pins, and it fell about her square shoulders in an auburn-and-chestnut cloud.
“So that’s it?” she asked. “We can go home now?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means someone has to deliver the ransom money.” He paused, then added, “And then someone has to bring her out.”
Chiara narrowed her eyes. They seemed to have darkened in color, never a good sign.
“I’m sure the prime minister can find someone other than you,” she said.
“I’m sure he can, too,” said Gabriel, “but I’m afraid he doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter.”
“Why is that?”
“Because the kidnappers made one final demand tonight.”
“You?”
Gabriel nodded. “No Gabriel, no girl.”
D
espite the lateness of the hour, Chiara wanted to cook. Gabriel sat at the tiny kitchen table, a glass of wine at his elbow, and recounted the journey he had taken after leaving her in Jerusalem. In any other marriage, the wife surely would have responded with incredulity and astonishment to such a story, but Chiara seemed preoccupied by the preparation of her vegetables and herbs. Only once did she look up from her work—when Gabriel told her about the empty holding cell in the house in the Lubéron, and the woman who had died in his arms. When he finished, she filled the center of her palm with salt, discarded a small portion into the sink, and poured the rest into a pot of boiling water.
“And after all that,” she said, “you decided to take a midnight stroll to South Kensington.”
“I considered doing a very foolish thing.”
“More foolish than agreeing to deliver ten million euros in ransom to the kidnappers of the British prime minister’s mistress?”
Gabriel said nothing.
“Who lives at Fifty-Nine Victoria Road?”
“Dr. and Mrs. Robert Keller.”
Chiara was about to ask Gabriel why he had gone to see them, but then she understood.
“What on earth would you have told them?”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
Chiara placed several mushrooms in the center of the cutting board and began slicing them precisely. “It’s probably better they think he’s dead,” she said reflectively.
“And if it was your son? Wouldn’t you want to know the truth?”
“If you’re asking whether I would want to know that my son killed people for a living, the answer is no.”
A silence fell between them.
“I’m sorry,” Chiara said after a moment. “I didn’t mean that to sound the way it did.”
“I know.”
Chiara placed the mushrooms in a sauté pan and seasoned them with salt and pepper. “Did she ever know?”
“My mother?”
Chiara nodded.
“No,” said Gabriel. “She never knew.”
“But she must have suspected something,” Chiara said. “You were gone for three years.”
“She knew I was involved in secret work and that it had something to do with Munich. But I never told her that I was the one who did the actual killing.”
“She must have been curious.”
“She wasn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Munich was a trauma for the entire country,” Gabriel responded, “but it was especially hard on people like my mother—German Jews who had survived the camps. She could barely look at the newspapers or watch the funerals on television. She locked herself in her studio and painted.”
“And when you came home after Wrath of God?”
“She could see the death in my eyes.” He paused, then added, “She knew what it looked like.”
“But you never talked about it?”
“Never,” said Gabriel, shaking his head slowly. “She never told me what happened to her during the Holocaust, and I never told her what I had done while I was in Europe for three years.”
“Do you think she would have approved?”
“It didn’t matter to me what she thought.”
“Of course it did, Gabriel. You’re really not as fatalistic as all that. If you were, you wouldn’t have gone to Keller’s old house in the middle of the night to stare at his father through the window.”
Gabriel said nothing. Chiara placed a bundle of fettuccine in the boiling water and stirred it once with a wooden spoon.
“What’s he like?” she asked.
“Keller?”
She nodded.
“Extremely capable, utterly ruthless, and without a shred of conscience.”
“He sounds like the perfect person to deliver ten million euros in ransom money to the kidnappers of Madeline Hart.”
“Her Majesty’s government is under the impression he’s dead. Besides,” Gabriel added, “the kidnappers specifically asked for me to deliver the money.”
“Which is precisely the reason you have no business doing it.”
Gabriel made no reply.
“How did they even know you were involved?”
“They must have spotted me in Marseilles or Aix.”
“So why would they want a professional like you to deliver the money? Why not a flunky from Downing Street who they can manipulate?”
“I suppose they’re entertaining thoughts of killing me. But that’s going to be rather hard to do.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ll be in possession of ten million euros that they want very badly, which means
we
call the shots.”
“We?”
“You don’t think I’m going to do this alone, do you? I’m going to have someone watching my back.”
“Who?”
“Someone extremely capable, utterly ruthless, and without a shred of conscience.”
“I thought he was back in Corsica.”
“He is,” said Gabriel. “But he’s about to get a wake-up call.”
“What about me?”
“Go back to the house in Cherbourg. I’ll bring Madeline there after paying the ransom. When she’s ready to be moved, we’ll bring her back to Britain. And then we’ll go home.”
Chiara was silent for a moment. “You make it sound so simple,” she said at last.
“If they play by my rules, it will be.”
Chiara placed a bowl of steaming fettuccine and mushrooms in the center of the table and sat down opposite Gabriel.
“No more questions?” he asked.
“Just one,” she said. “What did the old woman in Corsica see when you dropped the oil into the water?”
B
y the time they finished the dishes, it was nearly four in the morning, which meant it was nearly five on Corsica. Even so, Keller sounded awake and alert when he took Gabriel’s call. Using carefully coded language, Gabriel explained what had transpired at Downing Street and what was to happen later that day.
“Can you make the first flight to Orly?” he asked.
“No problem.”
“Pick up a car at the airport and get up to the coast. I’ll call you when I know something.”
“No problem.”
After severing the connection, Gabriel stretched out on the bed next to Chiara and tried to sleep, but it was no use. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw the face of the woman who had died in his arms in the Lubéron, in the valley with three villas. So he lay very still, listening to the sound of Chiara’s breathing and the hiss of the traffic on Bayswater Road, as the gray light of a London dawn crept slowly into the room.
He woke Chiara with fresh coffee at nine o’clock and showered. When he emerged from the bathroom, Jonathan Lancaster was on the television discussing his costly new initiative to repair Britain’s troubled families. Gabriel couldn’t help but marvel at the prime minister’s performance. His career was at that moment hanging by a gossamer thread, and yet he looked as commanding and unflappable as ever. Indeed, by the end of his remarks, even Gabriel was convinced that spending a few million more pounds in taxpayer money would solve the problems facing Britain’s permanent underclass.
The next story had something to do with a Russian energy firm securing rights to drill for oil in the British territorial waters of the North Sea. Gabriel switched off the television, dressed, and extracted a 9mm Beretta pistol from the safe concealed beneath the floor of the closet. Then, after kissing Chiara one final time, he headed downstairs to the street. Waiting curbside behind the wheel of his Vauxhall Astra was Nigel Whitcombe. He made the drive to Number Ten in record time and deposited Gabriel at the back entrance along Horse Guards Road.
“Let’s hope this one doesn’t end like the last one,” he said with false cheerfulness.
“Let’s,” agreed Gabriel, and he headed inside.
10 DOWNING STREET
J
eremy Fallon was waiting in the rear foyer of Number Ten. He offered Gabriel a warm, damp hand and then wordlessly led him to the White Drawing Room. This time, it was empty. Gabriel sat down without waiting for an invitation, but Fallon remained standing. He reached into his pocket and removed the keys to a rental car.
“It’s a Passat saloon, as you requested. If you could return it in one piece, I would be eternally grateful. I’m not as well-to-do as the prime minister.”
Fallon smiled weakly at his own joke. It was obvious why he didn’t smile more often; he had teeth like a barracuda. He handed Gabriel the keys, along with a parking stub.
“It’s in the car park at Victoria Station. The entrance is—”
“On Eccleston Street.”
“Sorry,” Fallon said sincerely. “Sometimes I forget who I’m dealing with.”
“I don’t,” said Gabriel.
Fallon was silent.
“What color is the car?”
“Island Gray.”
“What the hell is Island Gray?”
“The island mustn’t be very nice, because the car is quite dark.”
“And the money?”
“It’s in the boot, two suitcases, just as they requested.”
“How long has it been there?”
“Since early this morning. I dropped it off myself.”
“Let’s hope it’s still there.”
“The money or the car?”
“Both.”
“Was that supposed to be a joke?”
“No,” said Gabriel.
Frowning, Fallon sat down opposite Gabriel and contemplated his nails. There was little left of them.
“I owe you an apology for my behavior last night,” he said after a moment. “I was only acting in what I believed to be the best interests of my prime minister.”
“So was I,” replied Gabriel.
Fallon seemed taken aback. Like most powerful men, he was no longer used to being spoken to honestly.
“Graham Seymour warned me that you could be blunt at times.”
“Only when lives are at stake,” Gabriel responded. “And the moment I climb behind the wheel of that car, my life will be in danger. Which means, as of this moment, I make all the decisions.”
“I don’t need to remind you that this affair has to be concluded as discreetly as possible.”
“No, you don’t. Because if it isn’t, the prime minister isn’t the only one who’ll pay the price.”
Fallon made no response other than to glance at his wristwatch. It was 11:40, twenty minutes before the phone was supposed to ring. He rose to his feet with the air of a man who had not slept well in many days.
“The prime minister is in the Cabinet Room, meeting with the foreign secretary. I’m supposed to join them for a few minutes. Then I’ll bring him here for the call.”
“What’s the topic of the meeting?”
“British policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
“Don’t forget who’s delivering the money.”
Fallon gave another dreadful smile and headed wearily toward the door.
“Did you know?” asked Gabriel.
Fallon turned slowly. “Know what?”
“That Lancaster and Madeline were having an affair.”
Fallon hesitated before answering. “No,” he said at last, “I didn’t know. In fact, I never would have dreamed that he would do something to jeopardize all we’d worked for. And the irony of it all,” he added, “is that I was the idiot who introduced them.”
“Why did you?”
“Because Madeline was an integral part of our political operation. And because she was an extremely bright, capable woman whose future was limitless.”
Gabriel was struck by Fallon’s use of the past tense when talking about his missing colleague. Fallon noticed it, too.
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he said.
“What
did
you mean?”
“I’m not sure,” he responded. They were three words he didn’t often utter. “It’s just that she isn’t likely to be the same person after something like this, is she?”
“Humans are more resilient than you realize, especially women. With the right kind of help, she’ll eventually be able to resume her normal life. But you are right about one thing,” Gabriel added. “She’ll never be the same person again.”
Fallon reached for the door. “Is there anything else you need?” he asked over his shoulder.
“A few hours’ sleep would be nice.”
“How do you take it?”
“Milk, no sugar.”
Fallon went out and closed the door softly behind him. Gabriel rose, walked over to the Turner cityscape, and stood before it with one hand resting on his chin and his head tilted slightly to one side. It was 11:43, seventeen minutes until the phone was supposed to ring.
F
allon returned just before noon, accompanied by Jonathan Lancaster. The change in the prime minister’s appearance was remarkable. Gone was the Lancaster whom Gabriel had seen on television earlier that morning, the confident politician promising to repair the fabric of British society. In his place was a man whose life and career were in imminent danger of unraveling in the most spectacular political scandal in British history. It was obvious Lancaster could not endure much more before unraveling himself.
“Are you sure you want to be here for this?” Gabriel asked, shaking the prime minister’s hand.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because you might not like everything you hear.”
Lancaster sat down, making it clear he had no intention of going anywhere. Fallon withdrew the mobile phone from his coat pocket and placed it on the coffee table. Gabriel quickly removed the battery, exposing the serial number on the inside of the device, and used his personal BlackBerry to snap a photo of it.
“What are you doing?” asked Lancaster.
“In all likelihood, the kidnappers will tell me to leave this one in a place where it will never be found.”
“So why are you photographing it?”
“Insurance,” said Gabriel.
He slipped his BlackBerry back into his coat pocket and switched on the kidnappers’ device. It was 11:57. There was nothing more to do now but wait. Gabriel excelled at waiting; by his own calculation, he had spent more than half of his life doing it. Waiting for a train or a plane. Waiting for a source. Waiting for the sun to rise after a night of killing. Waiting for the doctors to say whether his wife would live or die. He had hoped his placid demeanor would calm Lancaster, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. The prime minister was staring unblinking at the display screen of the phone. By 12:03 it had yet to ring.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked finally in frustration.
“They’re trying to make you nervous.”
“They’re doing a damn good job of it.”
“That’s why I’m going to do the talking.”
Another minute passed with no contact. Then, at 12:05, the phone rang and began dancing its way across the tabletop. Gabriel picked it up and looked at the caller ID while the phone vibrated in his grasp. As he had expected, they were using a different phone. He lifted the cover and very calmly asked, “How can I help you?”
There was a pause, during which Gabriel could hear the clatter of a computer keyboard. Then came the robotic voice.
“Who is this?” it asked.
“You know who this is,” replied Gabriel. “Let’s get going. My girl has been waiting a long time for this day. I want to get this over and done with as quickly as possible.”
There was another pause, more typing. Then the voice asked, “Do you have the money?”
“I’m looking at it now,” Gabriel responded. “Ten million euros, unmarked, nonsequential, no beacons, no dye packs, everything you asked for. I hope you have a nice dirty bank at your disposal because you’re going to need it.”
He cast a quick glance at Lancaster, who seemed to be chewing at something on the inside of his cheek. Fallon looked as though he had gone into respiratory arrest.
“Are you ready for the instructions?” the voice asked after another burst of typing.
“I’ve been ready for several minutes,” answered Gabriel.
“Do you have something to write with?”
“Just go ahead,” said Gabriel impatiently.
“Are you in London?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a car?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Take the four-forty ferry from Dover to Calais. Forty minutes after departure, drop this phone into the Channel. When you get to Calais, go to the park on the rue Richelieu. Do you know it?”
“Yes, I know it.”
“There’s a rubbish bin on the northeast corner. The new phone will be taped to the bottom. After you get it, go back to your car. We’ll call you and tell you where to go next.”
“Anything else?”
“Come alone, no backup, no police. And don’t miss the four-forty ferry. If you do, the girl dies.”
“Are you finished?”
There was silence at the other end, no voice, no typing.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Gabriel. “Now listen carefully because I’m only going to say this once. This is your big day. You’ve worked very hard, and the end is almost in sight. But don’t spoil it by doing something stupid. I’m only interested in bringing the girl home safely. This is business, nothing more. Let’s do this like gentlemen.”
“No police,” said the voice after a few seconds’ delay.
“No police,” repeated Gabriel. “But let me say one more thing. If you try to harm either Madeline or me, my service is going to find out who you really are. And then they’re going to hunt you down and kill you. Are we clear?”
This time there was no response.
“And one other thing,” said Gabriel. “Don’t ever keep me waiting five minutes for a call again. If you do, the deal’s off.”
With that, he severed the connection and looked at Jonathan Lancaster.
“I think that went well. Don’t you, Prime Minister?”
I
t is rare to see a man stepping from the front door of 10 Downing Street dressed in blue jeans and a black leather jacket, but that is precisely what occurred at 12:17 p.m., on a rain-swept afternoon in early October. It was five weeks to the day after Madeline Hart’s disappearance on the island of Corsica, eight days after her photograph and video were left at the home of press aide Simon Hewitt, and twelve hours after the prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland agreed to pay ten million euros in ransom to secure her safe return. The policeman standing watch in the entrance hall knew none of this, of course. Nor did he realize that the unusually dressed man was the Israeli spy and assassin Gabriel Allon, or that beneath Gabriel’s black leather jacket was a Beretta semiautomatic, fully loaded. As a result, he bade him a pleasant day and then watched as Gabriel made his way along Downing Street to the Whitehall security gate. As he passed through it, a camera snapped his photograph. It was 12:19.
J
eremy Fallon had left the Passat in the uncovered portion of the Victoria Station car park. Gabriel approached it the way he always approached cars that were not his own, slowly and with a feeling of dread. He circled it once, as if inspecting the paint for scratches, and then intentionally dropped the keys to the redbrick paving stones. Crouching, he quickly scanned the undercarriage. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he stood upright again and pressed the trunk release. The hatch rose slowly, revealing two nylon suitcases of discount manufacture. He tugged at the zipper of one, peered inside, and saw row upon row of tightly packed hundred-euro notes.
By London standards, the traffic at that hour was only mildly catastrophic. Gabriel crossed the Chelsea Bridge at one o’clock, and by half past he had put London’s southern suburbs behind him and was speeding along the M25 motorway. At 2:00 p.m. he switched on Radio Four to listen to a news update. Little had changed since the morning; Jonathan Lancaster was still talking about curing the ills of Britain’s poor, and a Russian oil company was still planning to drill for oil in the North Sea. There was no mention of Madeline Hart, or of a man in blue jeans and a leather jacket who was about to pay ten million euros to her kidnappers. The man listened to the latest weather bulletin and learned that conditions were expected to deteriorate rapidly throughout the afternoon, with heavy rain and dangerous winds along the Channel coast. Then he switched off the radio and absently fingered the Corsican talisman around his neck. When she is dead, he heard the old woman say. Then you will know the truth.