The English Spy (17 page)

L
ATER
,
THE
M
ETROPOLITAN
P
OLICE WOULD
determine that it was forty-seven seconds—forty-seven seconds from the time the woman abandoned the car on Brompton Road to the instant the bomb contained in its trunk detonated. It weighed five hundred pounds and was of expert construction. Of Quinn they expected nothing less.

Initially, however, the Met did not know it was Quinn. All that would come later, after the shouting matches, the threats of resignation and reprisal, and the inevitable orgy of bloodletting. The Met knew only what they had been told by Amanda Wallace, chief of MI5, in the minutes before disaster struck. A thirty-two-year-old woman with a German passport had collected a stolen late-model BMW from the short-stay car park at Heathrow’s Terminal 3 and was driving alone toward central London. MI6 had been told by a senior
foreign intelligence operative—the operative was not identified—that the woman was connected to a known terrorist mastermind and bomb maker. Amanda Wallace recommended to the Met commissioner that he take any and all appropriate measures to impede the car’s progress and take the woman into custody. The commissioner had responded by dispatching units of the SCO19, the Met’s tactical firearms division. The first armed response vehicle arrived at the scene at the instant of detonation. Both officers were among the dead.

Nothing remained of the blue BMW, only a crater, twenty meters wide and ten meters deep, on the spot where it once stood. A portion of the roof was later found floating in the Serpentine, a distance of more than half a kilometer away. Cars and buses burned like embers in the street; a geyser spewed from a fractured water main, cleansing the severed limbs of the dead and wounded. Curiously, the buildings on the north side of the street, the side closest to the car, suffered only moderate structural damage. It was Harrods that bore the brunt of the bomb’s rage. The blast ripped away the building’s facade, exposing its interior like the floors of a doll’s house—bed and bath, furniture and home accessories, fine jewelry and perfume, women’s wear. For a long time afterward, dazed patrons of the Georgian Restaurant stood staring into the shattered street below. The famed tearoom was popular among wealthy women from the oil-rich emirates of the Gulf. Cloaked in their black veils, they looked like ravens perched upon a wire.

The number of casualties proved difficult to calculate. By nightfall the dead would number fifty-two, with more than four hundred wounded, many critically. Several television experts expressed relief—even shock—that the numbers were not far higher. Survivors spoke of two men who had engaged in a desperate attempt to move passersby to safety in the seconds before the bomb exploded. Their efforts were clearly visible in a videotape that found its way
onto the BBC. One man, armed, herded pedestrians along the pavement, while the other ripped passengers from a London bus. There was confusion over their identity. Their car, like the bomb car, had been blown to pieces, and neither man came forward, at least not to the public. The Met disowned them; MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service chose not to comment. The CCTV video showed one of the men taking shelter seconds before the bomb detonated, but the second man was last seen running toward a white Ford Fiesta trapped in the snarled traffic along Brompton Road. The occupants of the car, a mother and her young son, were incinerated in the fireball. The man was presumed to be among the dead, too, though his body was never found.

The initial shock and revulsion quickly gave way to anger and an intense search for the perpetrators. Atop the list of possible suspects was ISIS, the extreme jihadist group that had terrorized and beheaded its way to an Islamic caliphate stretching from Aleppo nearly to the gates of Baghdad. The group had vowed to attack the West, and its ranks included several hundred residents of the United Kingdom who had retained their precious British passports. Surely, declared the television experts, ISIS had both the motive and the capability to strike in the heart of London. But an ISIS spokesman denied the group had been involved, as did several other elements in the global Islamic conglomerate of death known as al-Qaeda. A remote Palestinian faction did claim responsibility, as did something called the Martyrs of the Two Holy Mosques. Neither claim was taken seriously.

The one person who could answer the question of responsibility was the woman who had delivered the bomb to its target: Anna Huber, thirty-two years of age, German citizen, last known address Lessingstrasse 11, Frankfurt. But forty-eight hours after the attack, her whereabouts remained a mystery. Attempts to track her
movements electronically proved useless. CCTV briefly showed her walking along Brompton Road toward Knightsbridge. But after the detonation, as smoke, debris, and panicked crowds poured into the street, the cameras lost sight of her. No one named Anna Huber had left the country via plane or rail; no one named Anna Huber had crossed another European frontier. Units of the German Bundespolizei raided her apartment and found four uninhabited rooms containing no trace of the person who might have once lived there. Neighbors described her as quiet and introspective. One said she was an international aid worker who spent a great deal of time in Africa. Another said she did something in the travel industry. Or was it journalism?

Responsibility for protecting the British homeland from terrorist attack fell primarily to MI5 and the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center. As a result, public and political anger over the Brompton Road bombing was directed largely at Amanda Wallace. The word
embattled
began to appear before her name in print or whenever it was mentioned on television or radio. Unnamed sources at the Met complained that the Security Service had been “less than forthcoming” with intelligence related to the attack. One senior investigator likened the flow of information from Thames House to Scotland Yard to the advance of a glacier. Later, he clarified his statement, calling cooperation between the two organizations “nonexistent.”

Subsequently, there appeared in the press unflattering accounts of Amanda’s management style. Underlings were said to fear her; numerous senior staff were said to be searching for greener pastures elsewhere at a time when Britain could least afford it. It was written of Amanda that she had a difficult relationship with Graham Seymour, her counterpart at MI6. It was said the two were scarcely speaking, that during one crisis meeting at Number Ten they had refused even to acknowledge each other’s presence. One notable former spook
said that relations between Britain’s two intelligence services were at their lowest point in a generation. A respected journalist who covered security issues for the
Guardian
wrote that “British intelligence was in the midst of a force-ten crisis,” and for once the journalist was correct.

At which point a deathwatch commenced outside Thames House, with Amanda Wallace as its target. It did not last long—two days, three at most. Then Amanda put an end to it. Her weapon of choice was the same esteemed correspondent from the
Guardian
, a man whom she had cultivated for years. His story began not with the bombing on Brompton Road but with the death of the princess, and it got worse from there. Quinn’s name was featured prominently. So, too, was Graham Seymour’s. It was, said one political commentator, the finest example of murder by press leak he had ever seen.

By midmorning a new deathwatch had commenced. This time, the target was the chief of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. He issued no statement and adhered to his schedule as normal until half past eleven, when his official Jaguar, with its blacked-out windows, was spotted sliding through the gates of Downing Street. He remained inside Number Ten for less than an hour. Later, Simon Hewitt, the prime minister’s director of communications, refused to confirm that the spymaster had set foot there. Shortly after two o’clock his Jaguar was seen turning into the underground parking garage of Vauxhall Cross, but as it turned out, Graham Seymour was not in it. He was sitting in the back of an unmarked panel van, and by then the van was already far from London.

T
HE ROAD HAD NO NAME
and appeared on no map. Viewed from space, it looked like a scratch in the moorland, perhaps the remnant of a brook that had run over the land in the days when men erected circles of stone. At its entrance was a sign, weathered and rusted, warning that the road was private. And at its end was a gate that whispered quiet authority.

The grounds beyond the gate were barren and bleak, an acquired taste. The man who built the cottage there had made his money in shipping. He had bequeathed it to his only son, and the son, who had no heirs, had entrusted it to the Secret Intelligence Service, where he had worked for the better part of a half-century. He had served in many distant corners of the empire, under many different names, but mainly he was known as Wormwood. The service named the cottage in his honor. Those who stayed there found the name appropriate.

It was set upon a swell in the land and was fashioned of Devon stone that had darkened with age and neglect. Behind it, across a broken courtyard, was a converted barn with offices and living quarters for the staff. When Wormwood Cottage was unoccupied, a single caretaker called Parish kept watch over it. But when a guest was present—guests were always referred to as “company”—the staff could number as many as ten. Much depended on the nature of the guest and the men from whom he was hiding. A “friendly” with few enemies might be given the run of the place. A defector from Iran or Russia would be treated almost as a prisoner.

The two men who arrived on the evening of the Brompton Road bombing fell somewhere in between. They had appeared with only a few minutes’ warning, accompanied by an acolyte of the chiefs who went by the work name Davies and a doctor who treated the wounds of the untreatable. The doctor had spent the rest of the night putting the older of the two men back together again. The younger one had watched over his every move.

He was an Englishman, the younger one, an expatriate, a man who had lived in another land, spoken another language. The older of the two was the legend. Two members of the staff had looked after him once before, after an incident in Hyde Park involving the daughter of the American ambassador. He was a gentleman, an artist by nature, a bit on the quiet side, a touch temperamental, but many of his ilk were. They would watch over him, tend to his wounds, and then send him on his way. And not once would they speak his name, for as far as they were concerned he did not exist. He was a man without a past or future. He was a blank page. He was dead.

For the first forty-eight hours of his stay, he was quieter than normal. He spoke only to the doctor who treated his wounds and to the Englishman. To the staff he said nothing at all, only a deflated “Thank you” whenever they brought him meals or clean clothing.
He kept to his small room overlooking the empty moorland, with only the television and the London papers for company. He made just one request; he wanted his BlackBerry. Parish the permanent caretaker patiently explained that company, even company of his exalted stature, weren’t permitted the use of private communications devices in Wormwood Cottage or on its grounds.

“I need to know their names,” the injured man said on the third morning of his stay, when Parish personally delivered his tea and toast.

“Whose names, sir?”

“The woman and the child. The police haven’t released their names.”

“I’m afraid it’s not my place, sir. I’m just the caretaker.”

“Get me their names,” he said again, and Parish, wishing to remove himself from the room, promised to do his utmost.

“What about my BlackBerry?”

“Sorry,” said Parish. “House rules.”

By the fourth day he was strong enough to leave his room. He was sitting in the garden at midday when the Englishman set off on a hike across the moor, and was there at sunset when the Englishman returned, dragging a pair of broken bodyguards in his wake. The Englishman walked every afternoon regardless of the weather—even on the fifth day, when a gale blew hard across the moors. On that day he insisted on carrying a rucksack weighted down with whatever debris the staff could find. The two bodyguards were half-dead by the time they stumbled back to the cottage. That night, in the living quarters of the converted barn, they spoke with hushed reverence of a man with almost superhuman strength and endurance. One of the bodyguards was former SAS and thought he recognized the mark of the Regiment. It was in his step, he said, and in the way his eyes took in the contour of the land. Sometimes it seemed as if he were viewing
it for the first time. Other times it appeared as though he were wondering how he ever could have left it. The bodyguards had looked after all kinds at the cottage—defectors, spies, blown field agents, frauds in search of a taxpayer-funded payday—but this one was different. He was special. He was dangerous. He had a dark past. And, perhaps, a bright future.

On the sixth day—the day of the
Guardian
article, the day that would later be remembered as the day British intelligence tore itself asunder—the younger of the two men set off toward the tor, a hike of ten miles, twenty if the bloody fool insisted on walking both ways. Five miles into the journey, while crossing a windswept highland, he paused suddenly, as if alerted to the presence of danger. His head rose and snapped to the left with an animal swiftness. Then he stood motionless, his eyes fixed on the target.

It was an unmarked panel van bumping along the road from Postbridge. He watched it turn into the road without a name. Watched it shoot into the hedgerows like a steel ball in a maze. Then he lowered his head and set off again. He walked with a heavy pack on his back and at a pace the bodyguards found hard to match. He walked like he was running away from something. He walked like he was coming home.

The gate was open by the time the van reached the end of the road. Only Parish was there to greet it. A dreadful sight, he thought, watching the chief of Her Majesty’s Secret Service crawling from the back of an ordinary van—
crawling
, he told the others that night, like some jihadi who’d been plucked from the battlefield and subjected to God knows what. Parish respectfully shook the chief’s hand while the wind played havoc with his plentiful gray locks.

“Where is he?” he asked.

“Which one, sir?”

“Our friend from Israel.”

“In his room, sir.”

“And the other one?”

“Out there,” said Parish to the moorland.

“How long until he returns?”

“Hard to say, sir. Sometimes I’m not sure he’s coming back at all. He strikes me as the sort of chap who could walk a very long way if he set his mind to it.”

The chief gave the faintest trace of a smile.

“Shall I tell the security team to bring him home, sir?”

“No,” said Graham Seymour as he entered the cottage. “I’ll see to that.”