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.

29

DARTMOOR, DEVON

THE 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.