The English Spy (33 page)

M
ADELINE
H
ART 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.

T
HE 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.”

A
T 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.

A
T 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.

“Where does he want us to go?”

“He says Shore Road is quiet.”

“Where?”

“Just north of the castle.”

“It’s not one of my favorite spots.”

“Can you get in and out before sunrise?”

“No problem.”

Jack Delaney increased the speed and set a course for the southern tip of the Ards Peninsula. Quinn peered into the forward cabin and saw Madeline lying bound and hooded on one of the two berths. She had passed the journey quietly. Katerina, who had made several emergency visits to the head to be sick, was smoking a cigarette at the galley table.

“How are you feeling?” asked Quinn.

“Do you care?”

“Not really.”

She nodded toward the Ardglass lighthouse and said, “Looks as though we missed our exit.”

“Change in plan,” said Quinn.

“Police?”

Quinn nodded.

“What did you expect?”

“Get ready,” he said. “We have one more boat ride.”

“Lucky me.”

Quinn slipped through the companionway and went onto the deck. The weather was clear and cold, and a spray of stars shone brightly in the black sky. The coastline north of Ardglass was mainly farmland, with a few scattered cottages overlooking the sea. Quinn swept the landscape with his binoculars, but it was still too dark to see anything. They churned past Guns Island, an uninhabited lump of green two hundred yards off the village of Ballyhornan, and a few minutes later rounded the rocky headland that guarded the mouth of Strangford Lough. Channel markers pointed the route north. The first lights were starting to come on in the cottages along Shore Road, enough so that Quinn could discern the silhouette of Kilclief Castle. Then he saw three bursts of light a little farther up the shoreline. He sent a text message that consisted only of a question mark. The reply said the front door was wide open.

Quinn readied the Zodiac and returned to the cabin. He pointed toward the spot where he had seen the flashes of light and instructed Jack Delaney to make for it. Then he ducked down the steps into the forward cabin and snatched the hood from Madeline’s head. A pair of eyes glared at him in the semidarkness.

“Time to go ashore,” said Quinn. “Be a good lass. Otherwise, I’ll put a bullet through your brain. Are we clear?”

The two eyes stared coldly back at him. No fear there, thought Quinn, only anger. He had to admit he admired her courage. He pulled the black hood over her head and lifted her to her feet.

Connor Delaney took them in straight and fast. Quinn climbed out into a foot of water. Then, with Katerina’s help, he lifted Madeline from the Zodiac and marched her toward the car parked along the edge of the road. The car was a Peugeot 508, dark gray. The boot
was open. Quinn forced Madeline inside and slammed the lid. Then he and Katerina climbed into the car, Katerina in the front passenger seat, Quinn stretched across the backseat, the Makarov pointed at her spine. Behind the wheel, wearing a reefer coat and a woolen watch cap, was Billy Conway. “Welcome home,” he said. Then he started the engine and pulled onto the road.

They headed west toward Downpatrick. Quinn turned his face away instinctively as a unit from the PSNI approached from the opposite direction, lights flashing.

“Where do you suppose he’s going so early on a lovely Saturday morning?”

“It’s like that all across the six counties.” Billy Conway glanced into the rearview mirror. “I suppose you’re the cause of it.”

“I suppose I am.”

“Who’s the girl in the trunk?”

Quinn hesitated, then answered truthfully.

“The Russian girl who was sleeping with the prime minister?”

“One and the same.”

“Christ, Eamon.” Billy Conway drove in silence for a moment. “You never told me you were bringing out a hostage.”

“The facts on the ground changed.”

“What facts?”

Quinn said nothing more.

“What do you intend to do with her?”

“Sit on her.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere no one will find her.”

“South Armagh?”

Quinn was silent.

“We’d better let them know we’re coming.”

“No,” said Quinn. “No phones.”

“We can’t just show up on their doorstep.”

“Yes, we can.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m Eamon Quinn.”

Another PSNI unit was speeding toward them out of Downpatrick. Quinn lowered his face. Billy Conway clutched the wheel tightly in both hands.

“Why did you bring that girl back here, Eamon?”

“Breadcrumbs,” replied Quinn.

“For what?”

“Just drive, Billy. I’ll tell you the rest when we get to Bandit Country.”