The English Spy (4 page)

T
HE FIRST INDICATION OF TROUBLE
came when Pegasus Global Charters of Nassau reported that a routine message to one of its vessels, the 154-foot luxury motor yacht
Aurora
, had received no reply. The Pegasus operations center immediately requested assistance from all commercial ships and pleasure craft in the vicinity of the Leeward Islands, and within minutes the crew of a Liberian-registered oil tanker reported that they had seen an unusual flash of light in the area at approximately 3:45 that morning. Shortly thereafter the crew of a container ship spotted one of the
Aurora
’s dinghies floating empty and adrift approximately one hundred miles south-southeast of Gustavia. Simultaneously, a private sailing vessel encountered life preservers and other floating debris a few miles to the west. Fearing the worst, Pegasus management phoned the British High Commission in Kingston and informed the honorary
consul that the
Aurora
was missing and presumed lost. Management then sent along a copy of the passenger manifest, which included the given name of the former princess. “Tell me it isn’t her,” the honorary consul said incredulously, but Pegasus management confirmed that the passenger was indeed the former wife of the future king. The consul immediately rang his superiors at the Foreign Office in London, and the superiors determined the situation was of sufficient gravity to wake Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster, at which point the crisis truly began.

The prime minister broke the news to the future king by telephone at half past one, but waited until nine to inform the British people and the world. Standing outside the black door of 10 Downing Street, his face grim, he recounted the facts as they were known at that time. The former wife of the future king had traveled to the Caribbean in the company of Simon Hastings-Clarke and two other longtime friends. On the holiday island of Saint Barthélemy, the party had boarded the luxury motor yacht
Aurora
for a planned one-week cruise. All contact with the vessel had been lost; surface debris had been discovered. “We hope and pray the princess will be found alive,” the prime minister said solemnly. “But we must prepare ourselves for the very worst.”

The first day of the search produced no remains or survivors. Nor did the second day or the third. After conferring with the Queen, Prime Minister Lancaster announced that his government was operating under the assumption that the beloved princess was dead. In the Caribbean, the search teams focused their efforts on finding wreckage rather than the bodies. It would not be a long search. In fact, just forty-eight hours later, an unmanned submersible operated by the French navy discovered the
Aurora
lying beneath two thousand feet of seawater. One expert who viewed the video images said it was clear the vessel had suffered some type of cataclysmic failure,
almost certainly an explosion. “The question is,” he said, “was it an accident, or was it intentional?”

A majority of the country—reliable polling said it was so—refused to believe she was actually gone. They hung their hopes on the fact that only one of the
Aurora
’s two Zodiac dinghies had been found. Surely, they argued, she was adrift on the open seas or had washed ashore on a deserted island. One disreputable Web site went so far as to report that she had been spotted on Montserrat. Another said she was living quietly by the sea in Dorset. Conspiracy theorists of every stripe concocted lurid tales of a plot to kill the princess that was conceived by the Queen’s Privy Council and carried out by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6. Pressure mounted on its chief, Graham Seymour, to issue a full-throated denial of the allegations, but he steadfastly refused. “These aren’t
allegations
,” he told the foreign secretary during a tense meeting at the service’s vast riverfront headquarters. “These are fairy tales spun by people with mental disorders, and I won’t dignify them with a response.”

Privately, however, Seymour had already reached the conclusion that the explosion aboard the
Aurora
was not an accident. So, too, had his counterpart at the DGSE, the highly capable French intelligence service. A French analysis of the wreckage video had determined that the
Aurora
was blown apart by a bomb detonated belowdecks. But who had smuggled the device aboard the vessel? And who had primed the detonator? The DGSE’s prime suspect was the man who had been hired to replace the
Aurora
’s missing head chef on the evening before the yacht left port. The French forwarded to MI6 a grainy video of his arrival at Gustavia’s airport, along with a few poor-quality still photos captured by private storefront security
cameras. They showed a man who did not care to have his picture taken. “He doesn’t strike me as the sort of chap who would go down with the ship,” Seymour told a gathering of his senior staff. “He’s out there somewhere. Find out who he really is and where he’s hiding out, preferably before the Frogs.”

He was a whisper in a half-lit chapel, a loose thread at the hem of a discarded garment. They ran the photographs through the computers. And when the computers failed to find a match, they searched for him the old-fashioned way, with shoe leather and envelopes filled with money—American money, of course, for in the nether regions of the espionage world, dollars remained the reserve currency. MI6’s man in Caracas could find no trace of him. Nor could he find any hint of an Anglo-Irish mother with a poetic heart, or of a Spanish-businessman father. The address on his passport turned out to be a derelict lot in a Caracas slum; his last known phone number was long deceased. A paid asset inside the Venezuelan secret police said he’d heard a rumor about a link to Castro, but a source close to Cuban intelligence murmured something about the Colombian cartels. “Maybe once,” said an incorruptible policeman in Bogotá, “but he parted company with the drug lords a long time ago. The last thing I heard, he was living in Panama with one of Noriega’s former mistresses. He had several million stashed in a dirty Panamanian bank and a beach condo on the Playa Farallón.” The former mistress denied all knowledge of him, and the manager of the bank in question, after accepting a bribe of ten thousand dollars, could find no record of any accounts bearing his name. As for the beach condo in Farallón, a neighbor could recall little of his appearance, only his voice. “He spoke with a peculiar accent,” he said. “It sounded as though he was from Australia. Or was it South Africa?”

Graham Seymour monitored the search for the elusive suspect from the comfort of his office, the finest office in all spydom, with its
English garden of an atrium, its enormous mahogany desk used by all the chiefs who had come before him, its towering windows overlooking the river Thames, and its stately old grandfather clock constructed by none other than Sir Mansfield Smith Cumming, the first “C” of the British Secret Service. The splendor of his surroundings made Seymour restless. In his distant past, he had been a field man of some repute—not for MI6 but for MI5, Britain’s less glamorous internal security service, where he had served with distinction before making the short journey from Thames House to Vauxhall Cross. There were some in MI6 who resented the appointment of an outsider, but most saw “the crossing,” as it became known in the trade, as a sort of homecoming. Seymour’s father had been a legendary MI6 officer, a deceiver of the Nazis, a shaper of events in the Middle East. And now his son, in the prime of life, sat behind the desk before which Seymour the Elder had stood, cap in hand.

With power, however, there often comes a feeling of helplessness, and Seymour, the espiocrat, the boardroom spy, soon fell victim to it. As the search ground futilely on, and as pressure from Downing Street and the palace mounted, his mood grew brittle. He kept a photo of the target on his desk, next to the Victorian inkwell and the Parker fountain pen he used to mark his documents with his personal cipher. Something about the face was familiar. Seymour suspected that somewhere—on another battlefield, in another land—their paths had crossed. It didn’t matter that the service databases said it wasn’t so. Seymour trusted his own memory over the memory of any government computer.

And so, as the field hands chased down false leads and dug dry wells, Seymour conducted a search of his own from his gilded cage atop Vauxhall Cross. He began by scouring his prodigious memory, and when it failed him, he requested access to a stack of his old MI5 case files and searched those, too. Again he found no trace of his
quarry. Finally, on the morning of the tenth day, the console telephone on Seymour’s desk purred sedately. The distinctive ringtone told him the caller was Uzi Navot, the chief of Israel’s vaunted secret intelligence service. Seymour hesitated, then cautiously lifted the receiver to his ear. As usual, the Israeli spymaster didn’t bother with an exchange of pleasantries.

“I think we might have found the man you’re looking for.”

“Who is he?”

“An old friend.”

“Of yours or ours?”

“Yours,” said the Israeli. “We don’t have any friends.”

“Can you tell me his name?”

“Not on the phone.”

“How soon can you be in London?”

The line went dead.

U
ZI
N
AVOT ARRIVED AT
Vauxhall Cross shortly before eleven that evening and was fired into the executive suite in a pneumatic tube of an elevator. He wore a gray suit that fit him tightly through his massive shoulders, a white shirt that lay open against his thick neck, and rimless spectacles that pinched the bridge of his pugilist’s nose. At first glance, few assumed Navot to be an Israeli or even a Jew, a trait that had served him well during his career. Once upon a time he had been a
katsa
, the term used by his service to describe undercover field operatives. Armed with an array of languages and a pile of false passports, Navot had penetrated terror networks and recruited a chain of spies and informants scattered around the world. In London he had been known as Clyde Bridges, the European marketing director for an obscure business software firm. He had run several successful operations on British soil at a
time when it was Seymour’s responsibility to prevent such activity. Seymour held no grudge, for such was the nature of relationships between spies: adversaries one day, allies the next.

A frequent visitor to Vauxhall Cross, Navot did not remark on the beauty of Seymour’s grand office. Nor did he engage in the usual round of professional gossip that preceded most encounters between inhabitants of the secret world. Seymour knew the reason for the Israeli’s taciturn mood. Navot’s first term as chief was nearing its end, and his prime minister had asked him to step aside for another man, a legendary officer with whom Seymour had worked on numerous occasions. There was talk that the legend had struck a deal to retain Navot’s services. It was unorthodox, allowing one’s predecessor to remain on the premises, but the legend rarely concerned himself with adherence to orthodoxy. His willingness to take chances was his greatest strength—and sometimes, thought Seymour, his undoing.

Dangling from Navot’s powerful right hand was a stainless-steel attaché case with combination locks. From it he removed a slender file folder, which he placed on the mahogany desk. Inside was a document, one page in length; the Israelis prided themselves on the brevity of their cables. Seymour read the subject line. Then he glanced at the photograph lying next to his inkwell and swore softly. On the opposite side of the imposing desk, Uzi Navot permitted himself a brief smile. It wasn’t often that one succeeded in telling the director-general of MI6 something he didn’t already know.

“Who’s the source of the information?” asked Seymour.

“It’s possible he was an Iranian,” replied Navot vaguely.

“Does MI6 have regular access to his product?”

“No,” answered Navot. “He’s ours exclusively.”

MI6, the CIA, and Israeli intelligence had worked closely for more than a decade to delay the Iranian march toward a nuclear weapon. The three services had operated jointly against the Iranian nuclear
supply chain and shared vast amounts of technical data and intelligence. It was agreed that the Israelis had the best human sources in Tehran, and, much to the annoyance of the Americans and the British, they protected them jealously. Judging from the wording of the report, Seymour suspected that Navot’s spy worked for VEVAK, the Iranian intelligence service. VEVAK sources were notoriously difficult to handle. Sometimes the information they traded for Western cash was genuine. And sometimes it was in the service of
taqiyya
, the Persian practice of displaying one intention while harboring another.

“Do you believe him?” asked Seymour.

“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.” Navot paused, then added, “And something tells me you believe him, too.”

When Seymour offered no reply, Navot drew a second document from his attaché case and laid it on the desktop next to the first. “It’s a copy of a report we sent to MI6 three years ago,” he explained. “We knew about his connection to the Iranians back then. We also knew he was working with Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and anyone else who would have him.” Navot added, “Your friend isn’t terribly discriminating about the company he keeps.”

“It was before my time,” Seymour intoned.

“But now it’s your problem.” Navot pointed toward a passage near the end of the document. “As you can see, we proposed an operation to take him out of circulation. We even volunteered to do the job. And how do you suppose your predecessor responded to our generous offer?”

“Obviously, he turned it down.”

“With extreme prejudice. In fact, he told us in no uncertain terms that we weren’t to lay a finger on him. He was afraid it would open a Pandora’s box.” Navot shook his head slowly. “And now here we are.”

The room was silent except for the ticking of C’s old grandfather
clock. Finally, Navot asked quietly, “Where were you that day, Graham?”

“What day?”

“The fifteenth of August, nineteen ninety-eight.”

“The day of the bombing?”

Navot nodded.

“You know damn well where I was,” Seymour answered. “I was at Five.”

“You were the head of counterterrorism.”

“Yes.”

“Which meant it was your responsibility.”

Seymour said nothing.

“What happened, Graham? How did he get through?”

“Mistakes were made. Bad mistakes. Bad enough to ruin careers, even today.” Seymour gathered up the two documents and returned them to Navot. “Did your Iranian source tell you why he did it?”

“It’s possible he’s returned to the old fight. It’s also possible he was acting at the behest of others. Either way, he needs to be dealt with, sooner rather than later.”

Seymour made no response.

“Our offer still stands, Graham.”

“What offer is that?”

“We’ll take care of him,” Navot answered. “And then we’ll bury him in a hole so deep that none of the old problems will ever make it to the surface.”

Seymour lapsed into a contemplative silence. “There’s only one person I would trust with a job like this,” he said at last.

“That might be difficult.”

“The pregnancy?”

Navot nodded.

“When is she due?”

“I’m afraid that’s classified.”

Seymour managed a brief smile. “Do you suppose he might be persuaded to take the assignment?”

“Anything’s possible,” replied Navot noncommittally. “I’d be happy to make the approach on your behalf.”

“No,” said Seymour. “I’ll do it.”

“There is one other problem,” said Navot after a moment.

“Only one?”

“He doesn’t know much about that part of the world.”

“I know someone who can serve as his guide.”

“He won’t work with someone he doesn’t know.”

“Actually, they’re very well acquainted.”

“Is he MI6?”

“No,” replied Seymour. “Not yet.”