“You,” said Gabriel.

The men behind the plot, he continued, had not acted in haste. They had planned with great care, with their political master looking over their shoulders every step of the way. Quinn was their weapon. Quinn was their perfect bait. The men behind the plot had no established links to the bomb maker, but surely their paths had crossed. They had flown him to their headquarters, treated him like a conquering hero, showered him with toys and money. And then they had sent him into the world to commit an act of murder—a murder that would shock a nation and set the rest of the plot in motion.

“The princess?”

Gabriel nodded.

“You can’t prove a word of it.”

“No,” said Gabriel. “Not yet.”

For several days after her murder, he continued, British intelligence had been unaware of Quinn’s involvement. Then Uzi Navot came to London with a piece of intelligence from an important Iranian source. Seymour traveled to Rome; Gabriel, to Corsica. Then, with Keller as his guide, he went trolling through Quinn’s murderous past. They found a secret family in West Belfast and a small apartment in the hills of Lisbon, where a woman called Anna Huber spent a single night, watched over by three men. Two of the men boarded an airplane with her, and the next act of the plot commenced. A blue BMW, stolen, repainted, fitted with false license plates, was left at Heathrow Airport. The woman collected the car and drove it to Brompton Road. She parked across the street from a London landmark, armed the bomb, and melted into the crowd while the two men tried desperately to save as many lives as possible. They knew the bomb was about to explode because Quinn had told them so. With a cryptic text message, Quinn had signed his name. And all the while, the men who had hired him were watching. Perhaps, added Gabriel, they still were.

“You think my service has been penetrated?” asked Seymour.

“Your service was penetrated a long time ago.”

Seymour paused and looked over his shoulder at the fading lights of Wormwood Cottage. “Is it safe for you here?”

“You tell me.”

“Parish knew my father. He’s as loyal as they come. Even so,” Seymour added, “we should probably move you soon, just to be on the safe side.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Graham.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m already dead.”

Seymour stared at Gabriel for a moment, bewildered. And then he understood.

“I want you to contact Uzi over your usual link,” said Gabriel. “Tell him I’ve succumbed to my injuries. Express your deepest condolences. Tell him to send Shamron to collect the body. I can’t do this without Shamron.”

“Do what?”

“I’m going to kill Eamon Quinn,” said Gabriel coldly. “And then I’m going to kill the man who paid for the bullet.”

“Leave Quinn to me.”

“No,” said Gabriel. “Quinn is mine.”

“You’re in no shape to go chasing after anyone, let alone one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists.”

“Then I suppose I’ll need someone to carry my bags. He should probably be someone from MI6,” Gabriel added quickly. “Someone to look after British interests.”

“Do you have someone in mind?”

“I do,” replied Gabriel. “But there’s one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“He’s not MI6.”

“No,” said Seymour. “Not yet.”

Seymour followed Gabriel’s gaze into the blackened landscape. At first there was nothing. Then three figures rose slowly from the darkness. Two appeared to be laboring with fatigue, but the third was pounding along the footpath as though he had many miles to go. He paused briefly and, looking up, gave a single stiff-armed wave. Then suddenly he was standing before them. Smiling, he extended a hand toward Seymour.

“Graham,” he said amiably. “Long time no see. Are you staying for supper? I hear Miss Coventry is making her famous cottage pie.”

Then he turned and set off into the darkness. And a moment later he was gone.

32

WORMWOOD COTTAGE, DARTMOOR

GRAHAM SEYMOUR DID INDEED STAY AT Wormwood Cottage for supper that night, and for a long time afterward, too. Miss Coventry served them the cottage pie and a decent claret at the kitchen table and then left them to a warm fire in the sitting room and to the past. Gabriel remained largely a spectator to the proceedings, a witness, a taker of notes. Keller did most of the talking. He spoke of his undercover work in Belfast, of the death of Elizabeth Conlin, and of Quinn. And he spoke, too, of the night in January 1991 when his Sabre squadron came under Coalition air attack in western Iraq, and of his long walk into the waiting arms of Don Anton Orsati. Seymour listened largely without interruption and without judgment, even when Keller described some of the many assassinations he’d carried out at the don’s behest. Seymour wasn’t interested in passing judgment. He was interested only in Keller.

And so he cracked a bottle of Wormwood Cottage’s finest single malt, added a log to the pile of embers in the grate, and proposed an arrangement that would result in Keller’s repatriation. He would be given a job at MI6. With it would come a new name and identity. Christopher Keller would remain dead to everyone but his immediate family and his service. He would handle cases that suited his particular skill set. Under no circumstances would he be drafting white papers at a desk in Vauxhall Cross. MI6 had plenty of analysts to do that.

“And if I bump into an old chum on the street?”

“Tell the old chum he’s mistaken and keep walking.”

“Where will I live?”

“Anywhere you want, so long as it’s in London.”

“What about my villa in Corsica?”

“We’ll see.”

From his outpost next to the fire, Gabriel treated himself to a brief smile. Keller’s questions resumed.

“Who will I work for?”

“Me.”

“Doing what?”

“Whatever I need.”

“And when you’re gone?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“That’s not what I read in the newspapers.”

“One of the things you’ll soon learn working at MI6 is that the newspapers are almost always wrong.” Seymour raised his glass and examined the color of the whisky by the light of the fire.

“What are we going to say to Personnel?” asked Keller.

“As little as possible.”

“There’s no way I can survive a traditional vetting.”

“I should think not.”

“What about my money?”

“How much is there?”

Keller answered truthfully. Seymour raised an eyebrow.

“We’ll have to work out something with the lawyers.”

“I don’t like lawyers.”

“Well, you can’t keep it hidden in secret bank accounts.”

“Why not?”

“Because, for obvious reasons, MI6 officers aren’t allowed to keep them.”

“I won’t be a normal MI6 officer.”

“You still have to play by the rules.”

“I never have before.”

“Yes,” said Seymour. “That’s why you’re here.”

And on it went, long past midnight, until finally the deal was done and Seymour crawled laboriously into the back of his undignified unmarked van. He left behind a notebook computer incapable of making contact with the outside world, and a password-protected thumb drive containing two videos. The first was an edited montage of CCTV images showing the delivery of the blue BMW to Heathrow Airport. The car had appeared on CCTV for the first time near Bristol, several hours before the bombing. The driver headed directly toward London along the M4. He wore a hat and sunglasses, rendering his features invisible to the cameras. He stopped once for fuel, paid in cash, and said nothing to the clerk during the exchange. Nor did he address anyone in the car park at Heathrow’s Terminal 3, where he deposited the BMW at 11:30 a.m., half an hour after British Airways Flight 501 departed Lisbon. After retrieving a suitcase from the backseat, he entered the terminal and boarded the Heathrow Express train to London’s Paddington Station, where a motorcycle was waiting. One hour later the bike slipped out of CCTV coverage on a country lane south of Luton. The motorcycle remained unaccounted for. The car’s point of origin on the day of the bombing was never determined.