by Daniel Silva
“I guess she didn’t like it,” said Gabriel.
“Maybe she has a headache.”
The woman was now reaching for the bag. She placed the strap over her shoulder and took one final look up the length of the street. Then she turned in the opposite direction, rounded the corner, and was gone.
“Too bad,” said Keller.
“We’ll see,” said Gabriel.
He was watching the waiter collect the money. But in his thoughts he was calculating how long it would be before he saw her again. Two minutes, he reckoned; that’s how long it would take her to make her way back to her destination along a parallel street. He marked the time on his wristwatch, and when ninety seconds had passed he placed his eye to the viewfinder and began counting slowly. When he reached twenty, he saw her emerge from the half-light, the bag over her shoulder, the sunglasses over her eyes. She stopped at the entrance of the target building, inserted a key into the lock, and pushed open the door. As she entered the foyer, another tenant, a man in his mid-twenties, was coming out. He glanced over his shoulder at her; whether it was in admiration or curiosity, Gabriel could not tell. He snapped the tenant’s photograph, then looked toward the darkened windows on the second floor. Ten seconds later light blossomed behind the blinds.
25
BAIRRO ALTO, LISBON
THEY DID NOT SEE HER again until half past eight the following morning when she appeared on the balcony wearing only a bathrobe—Quinn’s bathrobe, thought Gabriel, for it was far too large for her slender frame. She held a cigarette thoughtfully to her lips and surveyed the street in the steel dawn light. Her eyes were uncovered, and as Gabriel suspected they were blue. Blue as weather. Vermeer blue. He snapped several photographs and forwarded them to King Saul Boulevard. Then he watched the woman withdraw from the balcony and disappear behind the French doors.
For twenty additional minutes light burned in her window. Then the light was extinguished, and a moment later she stepped from the entrance of the building. Her bag hung from one shoulder, her right, and her hands were jammed into the pockets of her coat. It was a schoolgirl toggle coat, not the urban-tough leather jacket she had worn the night before. Her step was brisk; her boots clattered loudly against the paving stones. The sound rose as she flowed beneath the window of the observation post and then receded as she passed the shuttered restaurant and disappeared.
The Citroën that Gabriel had collected in Paris was parked around the corner from the observation post, on a street wide enough to accommodate cars. Keller retrieved it while Gabriel followed the woman on foot down another cobbled alleyway lined with shops and cafés. At the end of the street was a broader boulevard that flowed down the hill like a tributary of the Tagus. The woman entered a coffee shop, ordered at the bar, and sat at the counter along the window. Gabriel entered a café on the opposite side of the boulevard and did the same. Keller waited curbside until a police officer nudged him onward.
For fifteen minutes their positions remained unchanged: the woman in her café, Gabriel in his, Keller behind the wheel of the Citroën. The woman stared into her mobile phone while she drank her coffee and appeared to make at least one call. Then, at half past nine, she slipped the phone into her handbag and went into the street again. She walked south toward the river for several paces before stopping abruptly and waving down a taxi headed in the opposite direction. Gabriel quickly left the café and climbed into the passenger seat of the Citroën. Keller swung a U-turn and put his foot to the floor.
Thirty seconds elapsed before they were able to reestablish contact with the taxi. It plunged northward through the morning traffic, slicing in and out of the trucks, the buses, the shiny German-made sedans of the newly rich and the wheezing rattletraps of Lisbon’s less fortunate. Gabriel had operated infrequently in Lisbon, and his knowledge of the city’s geography was rudimentary. Even so, he had an idea of where the taxi was headed. The route it was following pointed toward Lisbon Airport like the needle of a compass.
They entered a modern quarter of the city and flowed in a river of traffic to a large circle at the edge of a green park. From there they tacked to the northeast to another circle, which spat them onto the Avenida da República. Near the end of the avenue they began to see the first signs for the airport. The taxi followed each one and eventually braked to a halt outside the departure level of Terminal 1. The woman stepped out and headed quickly toward the entrance, as though she were running late for her flight. Gabriel instructed Keller to ditch the Citroën in short-term parking with the gun in the trunk and the keys in the magnetic caddy above the left rear wheel. Then he climbed out and followed the woman into the terminal.
She paused briefly inside the doors to take her bearings and scrutinize the large departure board hanging above the gleaming modern hall. Then she headed directly to the British Airways counter and joined the short queue at first class. It was a piece of good fortune; British Airways flew to only a single destination from Lisbon. Flight 501 departed in an hour. The next flight wasn’t until seven that evening.
Gabriel drew his BlackBerry from his coat pocket and sent a message to the Travel department at King Saul Boulevard requesting two first-class tickets on BA Flight 501—one ticket for Johannes Klemp, the other for Adrien LeBlanc. Travel quickly confirmed receipt of the message and asked Gabriel to stand by. Two minutes later the reservation numbers appeared. Only one first-class seat was available; Travel, in its infinite wisdom, reserved it for Gabriel. Monsieur LeBlanc was booked into one of the few remaining seats in economy. It was in the rear of the aircraft, in the zone of wailing children and toilet odors.
Gabriel sent another message to King Saul Boulevard, requesting a car on a hot standby at Heathrow. Then he returned the BlackBerry to his pocket and watched the woman heading ticket in hand toward security. Keller waited until she was gone before walking over to Gabriel’s side.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
Gabriel smiled and said, “Home.”
They checked in separately: no luggage, no carry-ons of any kind. A Portuguese border policeman stamped their false passports; an airport security officer waved them through the screeners. They had forty-five minutes to kill before the flight, so they dawdled in the perfumed halls of duty-free and snagged some reading material from a newsstand so they wouldn’t board the plane empty-handed. The woman was at the gate when they arrived, her sky-blue eyes fixed on the screen of her mobile. Gabriel sat behind her and waited for the flight to be called. The first announcement was in Portuguese, the second in English. The woman waited for the second before rising. She dropped the mobile into her handbag and cruised onto the Jetway through the first-class lane. Gabriel did the same a moment later. While holding his ticket out to the gate attendant, he glanced at Keller, who was standing miserably among the overpacked huddled masses. Keller scratched his nose with his middle finger and frowned at the swaddled infant who would soon be his tormentor.
By the time Gabriel entered the aircraft, the woman had settled into her seat and been handed a glass of complimentary champagne. She was next to the window in the second row, on the left side of the fuselage. Her bag was at her feet, not quite properly stowed. An in-flight magazine lay on her thighs. She had yet to open it.
She paid Gabriel no heed as he squeezed past an overweight pensioner and dropped into his seat: fourth row, aisle, right side of the aircraft. An overly made-up flight attendant pressed a glass of champagne into Gabriel’s hand. There was a reason it was complimentary; it tasted like sparkling turpentine. He placed the glass carefully on the center console and nodded to his seatmate, a British businessman with a Yorkshire accent who was shouting something about a missing shipment into his mobile phone.
Gabriel withdrew his own device and keyed in another message to King Saul Boulevard, this time asking for an identity check of a woman of perhaps thirty who was at that moment occupying Seat 2A of British Airways Flight 501. The response came five minutes later, as Keller was shuffling past Gabri
el like a prisoner being marched out for a work detail. The passenger in question was Anna Huber, thirty-two years of age, German citizen, last known address Lessingstrasse 11, Frankfurt.
Gabriel powered off the BlackBerry and studied the woman on the other side of the aisle. Who are you? he thought. And what are you doing on this airplane?
26
HEATHROW AIRPORT, LONDON
THE 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 p
repared 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.