28 LONDON
In the aftermath, when the archivists and analysts of a dozen different services and agencies were picking over the scorched bones of the affair, all would be puzzled by the fact that Gabriel’s primary target during those first tenuous days of the operation was not Ivan Kharkov or his beautiful wife, Elena, but Alistair Leach, director of Impressionist and Modern Art at the august Christie’s auction house, Number 8 King Street, St. James’s, London. They took no joy in it; he was a good and decent man who became ensnared in the affair through no fault of his own, other than his serendipitous proximity to evil. Adrian Carter would later refer to him as “our own little cautionary tale.” Few lives are lived without a trace of sin, and fewer still can stand up to the scrutiny of an MI5 telephone tap and a full-time complement of MI5 watchers. There, by the grace of God, Carter would say, went us all.
Any intelligence officer with a modicum of conscience knows it can be a disquieting experience to rifle through the drawers of a man’s life, but Seymour, who had more scruples than most, made certain it was done with the gentlest hand possible. His listeners eavesdropped on Leach’s telephone conversations with a forgiving ear, his watchers stalked their quarry from a respectable distance, and his burrowers dug through Leach’s phone records, bank statements, and credit card bills with the utmost sensitivity. Only the room transmitters caused them to squirm-the transmitters that, at Gabriel’s insistence, had been hidden in Leach’s Kentish Town residence. It did not take long for the bugs to reveal why Leach spent so little time there. The listeners began referring to his wife, Abigail, only as “the Beast.”
Unbeknownst to Graham Seymour and MI5, Gabriel had taken up quiet residence during this phase of the affair in an Office safe flat in Bayswater Road. He used the lull in the operation to catch up on his rest and to heal his bruised body. He slept late, usually until nine or ten, and then spent the remainder of his mornings dawdling over coffee and the newspapers. After lunch, he would leave the flat and take long walks around central London. Though he was careful to alter his routes, he visited the same three destinations each day: the Israeli Embassy in Old Court Road, the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, and Duck Island in St. James’s Park. Graham Seymour appeared promptly at six o’clock the first two evenings, but on the third he arrived forty-five minutes later, muttering something about his director-general being in a snit. He immediately opened his stainless steel attaché and handed Gabriel a photograph. It showed Alistair Leach strolling the pavements of Piccadilly with a spinsterish woman at his side.
“Who is she?”
“Rosemary Gibbons. She’s an administrator in the Old Master Paintings department at Sotheby’s. For obvious reasons, both personal and professional, they keep their relationship highly secret. As far as we can tell, it’s strictly platonic. To tell you the truth, my watchers are actually rooting for poor Alistair to take it to the next step. Abigail is an absolute fiend, and his two children can’t bear the sight of him.”
“Where are they now?”
“The wife and children?”
“Leach and Rosemary,” Gabriel answered impatiently.
“A little wine bar in Jermyn Street. Quiet table in the far corner. Very cozy.”
“You’ll get me a picture, won’t you, Graham? A little something to keep in my back pocket in case he digs in his heels?”
Seymour ran a hand through his gray locks, then nodded.
“I’d like to move on him tomorrow,” Gabriel said. “What’s his schedule like?”
“Appointments all morning at Christie’s, then he’s attending a meeting of something called the Raphael Club. We have a researcher checking it out.”
“You can tell your researcher to stand down, Graham. I can assure you the members of the Raphael Club pose no threat to anyone except themselves.”
“What is it?”
“A monthly gathering of art dealers, auctioneers, and curators. They do nothing more seditious than drink far too much wine and bemoan the shifting fortunes of their trade.”
“Shall we do it before the meeting or after?”
“After, Graham. Definitely after.”
“You don’t happen to know where and when these gentlemen gather, do you?”
“Green’s Restaurant. One o’clock.”
29 ST. JAME’S, LONDON
The members of the little-known but much-maligned Raphael Club began trickling into the enchanted premises of Green’s Restaurant and Oyster Bar, Duke Street, St. James’s, shortly before one the following afternoon. Oliver Dimbleby, a lecherous independent dealer from Bury Street, arrived early, but then Oliver always liked to have a gin or two at the bar alone, just to get the mood right. The unscrupulous Roddy Hutchinson came next, followed by Jeremy Crabbe, the tweedy director of Old Master Paintings from Bonhams. A few minutes later came a pair of curators, one from the Tate and another from the National. Then, at one sharp, Julian Isherwood, the Raphael Club’s founder and beating heart, came teetering up the front steps, looking hungover as usual.
By 1:20, the guest of honor-at least in the estimation of Gabriel and Graham Seymour, who were sitting across the street from Green’s in the back of an MI5 surveillance van-had not yet arrived. Seymour telephoned the MI5 listeners and asked whether there was any recent activity on Leach’s work line or his mobile. “It’s the Beast,” explained the listener. “She’s giving him a list of errands he’s to run on the way home from work.” At 1:32, the listener called back again to say that Leach’s line was now inactive, and, at 1:34, a surveillance team in King Street reported that he had just left Christie’s in “a highly agitated state.” Gabriel spotted him as he rounded the corner, a reedlike figure with rosy patches on his cheeks and two wiry tufts of hair above his ears that flapped like gray wings as he walked. A team inside Green’s reported that Leach had joined the proceedings and that the white Burgundy was now flowing.
The luncheon was three hours and fifteen minutes in length, which was slightly longer than usual, but then it was June and June was a rather slow time of the year for all of them. The final wine count was four bottles of Sancerre, four bottles of a Provençal rosé, and three more bottles of an excellent Montrachet. The bill, when it finally arrived, caused something of a commotion, but this, too, was Raphael ritual. Estimated at “somewhere north of fifteen hundred pounds” by the team inside the restaurant, it was collected by means of a passed plate, with Oliver Dimbleby, tubbiest of the club’s members, cracking the whip. As usual, Jeremy Crabbe was short of cash and was granted a bridge loan by Julian Isherwood. Alistair Leach tossed a couple hundred quid onto the plate as it passed beneath his nose and he finished his last glass of wine. The interior team would later report that he had the look of a man who seemed to know his world was about to change, and not necessarily for the better.
They clustered briefly outside in Duke Street before going their separate ways. Alistair Leach lingered a moment with Julian Isherwood, then turned and started back toward Christie’s. He would get no farther than the corner of Duke and King streets, for it was there that Graham Seymour had chosen to make the scoop. The task was handled by a young operative named Nigel Whitcombe, who had a face like a parson and the grip of a blacksmith. Leach offered only token resistance as he was led by the elbow toward a waiting MI5 Rover.
“Mind telling me what this is all about?” he asked meekly as the car pulled away from the curb.
“I’d love to tell you more, Alistair, but I’m afraid I’m just the delivery boy.”
“It’s not a long drive, is it? I’m afraid you caught me at a delicate moment. A little too much wine at lunch. That damn Oliver Dimbleby. He’s trouble, Oliver. Always was. Always will be. He’s the one you should be picking up.”