The English Spy (16 page)

T
HE FLIGHT WAS TWO HOURS
and forty-six minutes in duration. The woman called Anna Huber passed the journey foodless and with no drink other than the champagne. Thirty minutes before they were due to land, she carried her handbag into the toilet and deadbolted the door. Gabriel thought about Quinn’s visit to Yemen, where he worked with al-Qaeda on a bomb capable of bringing down an airliner. Perhaps this is how it would end, he thought. He would plunge to his death in a green English field, strapped to a seat with a businessman from Yorkshire. Then suddenly the lavatory door squeaked open and the woman reappeared. She had run a brush through her dark hair and added a hint of color to her pale cheeks. Her blue eyes passed over Gabriel with no trace of recognition as she reclaimed her seat.

The plane emerged from the bottom of a cloud and dropped onto
the runway with a heavy thud that opened a few of the overhead luggage bins. It was a few minutes after one, but outside it looked like nightfall. The businessman was soon blaring into his mobile; it seemed the crisis in his affairs had not resolved itself. Gabriel powered on his BlackBerry and learned that a silver Volkswagen Passat would be waiting outside Terminal 3. He sent a message of confirmation, and when the seatbelt light died, he rose slowly and joined the queue of passengers waiting to exit the aircraft. The woman called Anna Huber was trapped against the window, hunched over, burdened by the handbag. When the cabin doors opened, Gabriel waited for her to step into the aisle. She gave him a terse nod of gratitude—again there was no suggestion of recognition—and filed onto the Jetway.

Her German passport allowed her to enter the United Kingdom through the express EU lane. Gabriel was standing directly behind her when the British immigration officer asked about the nature of her visit. Her response was inaudible to Gabriel, though clearly it pleased the immigration officer, who rewarded her with a warm smile. Gabriel received no such welcome. The immigration officer stamped his passport with thinly restrained violence and returned it without eye contact.

“Enjoy your stay,” he said.

“Thank you,” replied Gabriel, and set off after the woman.

He caught up with her in the cattle chute that herded passengers into the arrivals hall. A low-level operative from London Station was standing along the railing, next to a pair of black-veiled women. He was holding a paper sign that read ashton and wearing an expression of profound boredom. He jammed the sign into his pocket and fell in next to Gabriel as he threaded his way through a tearful family reunion.

“Where’s the car?”

The operative nodded toward the left-most door.

“Go back to the rail and hold up your sign. Another man will be along in a few minutes.”

The operative dropped away. Outside, a line of taxis and airport shuttles waited in the early-afternoon gloom. The woman threaded her way through the traffic and headed for the short-stay car park. It was the one scenario for which Gabriel had not accounted. He drew his BlackBerry and called Keller.

“Where are you?”

“Passport control.”

“There’s a man in the arrivals hall holding a sign that says Ashton. Tell him to take you to the car.”

Gabriel rang off without another word and followed the woman into the car park. Her vehicle was on the second level, a blue BMW sedan, British registration. She fished the key from her handbag, popped the locks with the remote, and lowered herself into the driver’s seat. Gabriel rang Keller a second time.

“Where are you now?”

“Behind the wheel of a silver Passat.”

“Meet me at the exit of short-term parking.”

“Easier said than done.”

“If you’re not there in two minutes, we’re going to lose her.”

Gabriel killed the call and concealed himself behind a concrete pillar as the BMW passed. Then he headed down the ramp at a trot and returned to the arrivals level of the terminal. The BMW was nosing from the exit. It slid past Gabriel’s position and disappeared from sight. Gabriel started to dial Keller a third time but stopped when he saw the flashing headlamps of a rapidly approaching Volkswagen. He swung into the passenger seat and waved Keller forward. They caught up with the BMW as it was turning onto the A4, bound for West London. Keller eased off the
throttle and lit a cigarette. Gabriel lowered his window and rang Graham Seymour.

The call arrived during a brief lull between a meeting of his senior staff and a visit by the chief of Jordanian intelligence, a man whom Seymour secretly loathed. Seymour jotted down the key details. Later, he wished he had not. A woman named Anna Huber, German passport, Frankfurt address, had just arrived in London via Lisbon, where she had passed a single night in an apartment connected to Eamon Quinn. At Heathrow Airport she had collected a blue BMW, British registration AG62 VDR, from the short-stay car park. The car was now headed toward London, followed by the future chief of Israeli intelligence and an SAS deserter turned professional assassin.

Seymour had taken the call on a device reserved for his private communications. Next to it was his direct line to Amanda Wallace at Thames House. He hesitated for a few seconds, then lifted the receiver to his ear. It rang without dialing. Amanda’s voice came instantly on the line.

“Graham,” she said genially. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m afraid that operation of mine has touched British soil.”

“In what form?”

“A car headed toward the center of London.”

After hanging up, Amanda Wallace boarded her private elevator and rode down to the operations center. She settled into her usual chair on the top deck and snatched up a telephone that reconnected her to Graham Seymour.

“Where are they?” she asked.

Ten tense seconds elapsed before Seymour answered. The BMW was approaching the Hammersmith flyover. Amanda Wallace ordered one of the techs to feed the CCTV image into the center video screen. Twenty seconds later she saw the blue BMW speed past in a blur of wet traffic.

“What kind of car does Allon have?”

Seymour answered as the Passat flowed through the shot, three cars behind the BMW. Amanda ordered the op center techs to track the movements of the two vehicles. Then she rang the chief of A4, MI5’s covert surveillance and operational arm, and ordered him to put the cars under physical watch.

Other senior staff were now rushing into the op center, including Miles Kent, the deputy director. Amanda asked him to run a check of the BMW’s registration. In less than a minute, Kent had an answer. There was no record of AG62 VDR in the database. The registration plates were false.

“Find out if any blue BMWs have been reported stolen,” snapped Amanda.

This search took longer than the first, nearly three minutes. A BMW of the same make and model had gone missing four days earlier in the seaside town of Margate. But it was gray, not blue.

“They must have painted it,” said Amanda. “Find out when it was left at Heathrow, and get me the video.”

She looked at the center screen. The BMW was passing through the intersection of West Cromwell Road and Earl’s Court Road. The Passat was three cars behind. Gabriel Allon, whom Amanda had met just once, was clearly visible in the passenger seat. So was the man behind the wheel.

“Who’s the driver of the chase car?” she asked Graham Seymour.

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m sure it is.”

The BMW was approaching the Natural History Museum. The surrounding pavements were crowded with schoolchildren. Amanda squeezed the telephone so tightly the blood drained from her knuckles. When she spoke, though, she managed to sound calm and assured.

“I’m not prepared to allow this to continue much longer, Graham.”

“I’ll support whatever decision you make.”

“That’s very good of you.” Her voice contained a knife’s edge of contempt. She was still watching the center screen. “Tell Allon to back off. We’ll take it from here.”

She listened as Seymour relayed the message. Then she picked up the receiver of a dedicated line to the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service. The commissioner came on instantly.

“There’s a dark blue BMW sedan headed east on Cromwell Road. UK registration AG62 VDR. The registration plates are known to be false, the car is almost certainly stolen, and the woman driving it is connected to a known terrorist.”

“What do you recommend?”

Amanda Wallace stared at the video screen. The BMW was on Brompton Road heading toward Hyde Park Corner. And three cars behind it, traveling at the same rate of speed, was the silver Passat.

At the edge of Brompton Square, a London policeman sat astride a motorbike. He paid the BMW no heed as it sped past him. Nor did his head turn at the approach of a silver Passat. Gabriel lifted the BlackBerry to his ear.

“What’s going on?” he asked Graham Seymour.

“Amanda has ordered the Met to intervene and take the woman into custody.”

“Where are they?”

“One team is coming down Park Lane. A second is approaching Hyde Park Corner from Piccadilly.”

A row of exclusive shops slid past Gabriel’s rain-spattered window. An art gallery, a home-design showroom, a real estate broker, an open-air café where tourists swilled drinks beneath the shelter of a green awning. In the distance a siren cried. To Gabriel, it sounded like a child calling for its mother.

Keller slammed suddenly on the brakes. Ahead, a red light had halted the traffic. Two cars—a taxi and a private vehicle—separated Gabriel and Keller from the BMW. Brompton Road stretched before them. On the right side of the street rose the gingerbread turrets of the Harrods department store. The sirens were growing louder, but the police were not yet in sight.

The signal switched to green, the traffic shot forward. They passed Montpelier Street and another row of shops and cafés. Then the BMW lurched into a lane reserved for buses and came to a stop outside a branch of the HSBC bank. The front door swung open; the woman climbed out and walked calmly away. In an instant she vanished beneath the canopy of umbrellas bobbing like mushrooms along the pavement.

Gabriel stared at the blue car parked along the curb, and at the throngs of tourists and pedestrians rushing through the rain, and at the dreamlike facade of the iconic department store rising on the opposite side of the street. Then, finally, he looked down at his BlackBerry, which was vibrating silently in his palm. It was a text message from an unidentified sender, six words in length.

THE BRICKS ARE IN THE WALL
. . .

T
HEY LEAPT FROM THE CAR
in a blur, flailing their arms like madmen, each shouting the same single word over the wail of the approaching sirens. For a few seconds no one reacted. Then Gabriel drew a Beretta from the glove box of the car and the pedestrians recoiled in fear. It proved to be an effective tool, the fear. He drove the crowd away from the BMW, helping the fallen to their feet, while Keller desperately tried to evacuate a double-decker bus. Terrified passengers jammed the doorways front and rear. Keller tore them free and hurled them into the street like rag dolls.

Motorists traveling in both directions along Brompton Road had stopped to watch the commotion. Gabriel beat his fists on the windscreens of the cars and waved the drivers onward, but it was no use. The traffic was hopelessly snarled. In the back of a white Ford compact, a curly-haired boy of two was strapped tightly into a car seat.
Gabriel clawed at the latch, but the door was locked and the child’s terrified mother, apparently thinking him a madman, refused to open it. “There’s a bomb!” he shouted through the glass. “Get away!” But the woman only stared back, uncomprehending and mute, as the child began to cry.

Keller had completed the evacuation of the bus and was hammering wildly on the windows of the HSBC bank. Gabriel lifted his eyes from the child and stared over the roofs of the motionless cars toward the opposite pavement. A crowd of bystanders had gathered outside Harrods. Gabriel ran toward them, shouting, waving his gun, and the crowd dispersed in terror. In the stampede a pregnant woman fell to the pavement. Gabriel rushed to her side and hoisted her to her feet.

“Can you walk?”

“I think so.”

“Hurry!” he shouted at her. “For your child.”

He thrust her toward safety and in his thoughts began to calculate how much time had elapsed since the text message had appeared on his BlackBerry. Twenty seconds, he thought, thirty at most. In that brief span of time, they had managed to move more than a hundred people from what would soon be the immediate blast zone, but cars still jammed the street, including the white Ford compact.

Shoppers were now streaming from the entrance of Harrods. Gun in hand, Gabriel herded them back into the lobby, shouting at them to take shelter deep within the building. Returning to the street, he saw that the traffic had not moved. The white Ford compact waved to him like a flag of surrender. The woman was still behind the wheel, paralyzed by indecision, unaware of what was about to happen. In the backseat the child screamed inconsolably.

The Beretta slipped from his hand, and suddenly he was running, tearing at the air with his hands, as though trying to propel his way
there faster. As he reached for the car door, a flash of brilliant white light blinded him, like the light of a thousand suns. He rose on a blast of scorching wind and tumbled helplessly backward into a storm of glass and blood. A child’s hand reached for him; he seized it briefly but it slipped through his grasp. Then a darkness fell over him, silent and still, and there was nothing at all.