The English Girl: A Novel (22 page)

38

HAMPSTEAD HEATH, LONDON

T
hey walked to Hyde Park corner, boarded a Piccadilly Line train to Leicester Square, and then took the long slow ride on the Northern Line up to Hampstead. Keller entered a small café in the High Street and waited there while Gabriel made his way alone up South End Road. He entered the heath at the Pryors Field, skirted the banks of the Hampstead Ponds, and then climbed the gentle slope of Parliament Hill. In the distance, veiled by low cloud and mist, glowed the lights of the City of London. Graham Seymour was admiring the view from a wooden park bench. He was alone except for a pair of raincoated security men who stood with the stillness of chess pieces along the footpath at his back. They averted their eyes as Gabriel slipped wordlessly past them and sat down at Seymour’s side. The MI5 man gave no sign he was aware of Gabriel’s presence. Once again, he was smoking.

“You’ve really got to stop that,” said Gabriel.

“And
you
really should have told me you were coming back into the country,” replied Seymour. “I would have arranged a reception committee.”

“I didn’t want a reception committee, Graham.”

“Obviously.” Seymour was still contemplating the lights of central London. “How long have you been in town?”

“I came in yesterday afternoon.”

“Why?”

“Unfinished business.”

“Why?”
asked Seymour again.

“Madeline,” said Gabriel. “I’m here because of Madeline.”

Seymour turned his head and looked at Gabriel for the first time. “Madeline is dead,” he said slowly.

“Yes, Graham, I know that. I was there.”

“I’m sorry,” Seymour said after a moment. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Forget about it, Graham.”

The two men lapsed into an uneasy silence. It was the nature of this unfortunate case, thought Gabriel. They had both gotten into the intelligence business to protect their countries and their fellow citizens, not their politicians.

“You must have discovered something important,” Seymour said finally. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have called me.”

“You were always good, Graham.”

“Not good enough to keep you from entering my country anytime you please.”

Gabriel was silent.

“What have you got?”

“I believe I know who kidnapped Madeline Hart. More important,” Gabriel added, “I believe I know
why
she was kidnapped.”

“Who was it?”

“KGB Oil and Gas,” answered Gabriel.

Seymour’s head turned sharply. “What are you talking about?”

“It was the Volgatek deal, Graham. Madeline was kidnapped so the Russians could steal your oil.”

T
here is no worse feeling for a professional spy than to be told something by an officer from another service that he should have already known himself. Graham Seymour suffered this indignity with as much grace as possible, with his chin up and his head held high. Then, after carefully weighing the consequences, he asked for an explanation. Gabriel began by telling him everything he had learned about Jeremy Fallon. That Fallon had been in love with Madeline Hart. That Fallon had worn out his welcome at Downing Street and was due to be pushed out before the next election. That Fallon had accepted a secret payment of five million euros from one Gennady Lazarev and had then used his power to push through the deal over the objections of the secretary of state for energy. Finally, he told Seymour about the Russian-speaking woman he had first seen in an ancient church in the Lubéron and then in an abandoned council house in Basildon.

“Who’s the source for Jeremy Fallon and the five million?” asked Seymour.

“I’d like to claim a zone of exclusivity on that one, if you don’t mind.”

“I’m sure you would. But who’s the source?”

Gabriel answered truthfully. Seymour shook his head slowly.

“Viktor Orlov is genetically incapable of telling the truth,” he said. “He’s always offering MI6 bits of so-called intelligence about Russia, and none of it ever pans out.”

“Chiara and I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for Viktor Orlov,” Gabriel responded.

“That doesn’t mean that everything he says is true.”

“He knows more about the underside of the Russian oil industry than anyone else in the world.”

Seymour did not challenge this assertion. “And you’re sure about the man and the woman who drove off in the Mercedes?” he asked. “You’re sure they were the same ones who followed you in the gallery?”

“Graham,” said Gabriel wearily.

“We all make mistakes from time to time.”

“Some of us more often than others.”

Seymour tossed his cigarette into the darkness in anger. “Why am I hearing about this only now? Why didn’t you call me last night while you had them under watch?”

“And what would you have done? Would you have alerted the chief of your Russian counterintelligence division? Would you have informed your director?” Gabriel was silent for a moment. “If I had come to you last night, it would have set in motion a chain of events that would have led to the destruction of Jonathan Lancaster and his government.”

“So why are you coming to me now?”

Gabriel made no reply. Seymour started to light another cigarette, then stopped himself.

“Rather ironic, don’t you think?”

“What’s that?”

“I asked you to find Madeline Hart because I was trying to protect my prime minister from scandal. And now you’re bringing me information that could destroy him.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“You can’t prove a word of it, you know. Not one word.”

“I realize that.”

Seymour exhaled heavily. “I am the deputy director of Her Majesty’s Security Service,” he said, more to himself than to Gabriel. “Deputy directors of MI5 do not bring down British governments. They protect them from enemies foreign and domestic.”

“But what if the government is dirty?”

“What government isn’t?” Seymour replied glibly.

Gabriel didn’t answer. He was in no mood for a relativistic debate over ethics in politics.

“And if I prevailed upon you to walk away and forget about it?” asked Seymour. “What would you do?”

“I would abide by your wishes and go home to Jerusalem.”

“And do what?”

“It seems Shamron has plans for me.”

“Anything you want to tell me about?”

“Not yet.”

Seymour was clearly intrigued but let it drop for now. “And what would you think of me?” he asked after a moment.

“What does it matter what I think?”

“It matters to me,” said Seymour earnestly.

Gabriel made a show of thought. “I think you would spend the rest of your life wondering what the SVR was doing with all the money they were siphoning from the North Sea. And I think you would feel guilty that you’d done nothing to stop it.”

Seymour made no reply.

“We have a saying in our service, Graham. We believe that a career without scandal is not a proper career at all.”

“We’re British,” Seymour answered. “We don’t have sayings, and we don’t like scandals. In fact, we live in fear of making even the slightest misstep.”

“That’s why you have me.”

Seymour looked at Gabriel seriously for a moment. “What exactly are you suggesting?”

“Let me go to war against Volgatek on your behalf. I’ll find the proof that they stole your oil.”

“And then what?”

“I’ll steal it back.”

G
abriel and Graham Seymour spent the next thirty minutes thrashing out the details of perhaps the most unorthodox operational accord ever reached between two sometimes-allied services. Later, it would come to be known as the Parliament Hill accord, though there were some inside British intelligence who referred to it as the Kite Hill accord, which was the other name for the knoll at the southern end of Hampstead Heath. Under the provisions of the agreement, Seymour granted Gabriel the license to operate on British soil as he saw fit, provided there was no violence and no threat to British national security. For his part, Gabriel pledged that any intelligence produced by the operation would be turned over to Seymour and that Seymour and Seymour alone would decide how to use it. The deal was sealed with a handshake. Then Seymour departed, trailed by his bodyguards.

Gabriel remained in the Heath for another ten minutes before walking back to Hampstead High Street to collect Keller. Together they rode the Underground to Kensington and then made their way on foot to the Israeli Embassy. The Office station was deserted except for a low-level clerk who leaped to attention when the legend came striding through the doorway unannounced. Gabriel deposited Keller in the anteroom, then made his way into the secure communications pod, which Office veterans such as himself referred to as the Holy of Holies. Shamron’s home number in Tiberias was still loaded into the directory of emergency contacts. He answered after the first ring, as though he had been sitting by the phone.

Though the call was technically secure, the two men spoke in the terse patois of the Office, a language no translator or supercomputer could ever decipher. Gabriel quickly explained what he had discovered, what he planned to do next, and what he required to move forward. The resources for such an operation were not Shamron’s to provide. Nor did he retain any official authority to approve it. Only Uzi Navot could launch such an endeavor—and only with the blessing of the prime minister himself.

And thus the groundwork was laid for a row that would go down in the annals as one of the worst in the storied history of the Office. It commenced at 10:18 p.m. Israel time, when Shamron rang Navot at home and told him that Gabriel intended to go to war against KGB Oil & Gas and that Shamron wanted the operation to proceed. Navot made it clear that such an undertaking was not in the cards. Not then. Not ever. Shamron hung up without another word and rang the prime minister before Navot had a chance to head him off.

“Why am I starting a war with the Russian president?” the prime minister asked. “It’s only oil, for God’s sake.”

“It’s not
only
about oil, not for Gabriel. Besides,” Shamron added, “do you want him to be the next chief or not?”

“You know I want him, Ari.”

“Then let him settle an old score with the Russians,” Shamron said, “and he’ll be yours.”

“Who’s going to tell Uzi?”

“I doubt he’ll take my call.”

And so it was that the Israeli prime minister, acting at the behest of Ari Shamron, called the chief of his foreign intelligence service and ordered him to approve an operation the chief wanted no part of. Witnesses would later attest to the fact that voices were raised, and there were rumors Navot threatened to resign. But they were only that, rumors, for Navot loved being the chief almost as much as Shamron had. In a sign of things to come, Navot refused to call Gabriel in London to personally bestow his blessing, leaving the task to a lowly desk officer instead. Gabriel received his formal operational charter shortly after midnight London time, in a phone call lasting less than ten seconds. After hanging up the phone, he and Keller left the embassy and set out through the quiet streets of London, toward the Grand Hotel Berkshire.

“What about me?” asked Keller. “Do I stay, or do I get on the next plane to Corsica?”

“It’s up to you.”

“I think I’ll stay.”

“You won’t be disappointed.”

“I don’t speak Hebrew.”

“That’s good.”

“Why?”

“Because we can make fun of you, and you’ll never know it.”

“How are you going to use me?”

“You speak French like a Frenchman, you have several clean passports, and you’re rather good with a gun. I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

“May I offer a piece of advice?”

“Just one.”

“You’re going to need a Russian.”

“Don’t worry,” said Gabriel. “I’ve got one.”

39

GRAYSWOOD, SURREY

T
he rambling
Tudor house stood a mile from the old Grayswood parish church, at the edge of
the Knobby Copse. A rutted beech drive led to it; thick hedgerows shielded it
from view. There was a tangled garden for thinking deep thoughts, eight private
acres for wrestling with one’s demons, and a stock pond that hadn’t been fished
in years. The bass that stalked its dark waters were now the size of sharks.
Housekeeping, the Office division that acquired and maintained secure
properties, referred to the pond as Loch Ness.

Gabriel and Keller arrived at the property shortly
after noon the next day, in a four-wheel-drive Land Rover that had been supplied
by Transport. In the back were two stainless steel crates filled with secure
communications equipment taken from the embassy safe room, along with several
bags of groceries from the Sainsbury’s supermarket in Guildford. After loading
the food into the pantry, they pulled the covers from the furniture, blew the
cobwebs from the eaves, and searched the old house from end to end for listening
devices. Then they went into the garden and stood on the banks of the stock
pond. Dorsal fins carved slits in the black surface.

“They weren’t joking,” said Keller.

“No,” said Gabriel.

“What do they eat?”

“They devoured one of my best officers the last
time we were here.”

“Is there any tackle?”

“In the mudroom.”

Keller went inside and found a pair of rods leaning
in the corner, next to a splintered old oar. While searching for a lure, he
heard a dull thud, like the snapping of a tree limb. Stepping outside, he
smelled the unmistakable odor of gunpowder on the air. Then he glimpsed Gabriel
coming up the garden path, a silenced Beretta in one hand, a two-foot fish in
the other.

“That hardly seems sporting,” Keller said.

“I don’t have time for sport,” said Gabriel. “I
have to figure out a way to get an agent inside a Russian oil company. And I
have many mouths to feed.”

L
ate
that afternoon, as the hedgerows melted into the gathering darkness and the air
turned brittle with cold, there arrived at the isolated Tudor house at the edge
of the Knobby Copse a caravan of three motorcars. The vehicles were of different
make and model, as were the nine operatives who emerged from them, weary after a
long day of clandestine travel. Within the corridors and conference rooms of
King Saul Boulevard, the operatives were known as Barak, the Hebrew word for
lightning, because of their ability to gather and strike quickly. The Americans,
jealous of the unit’s matchless list of operational accomplishments, referred to
them as “God’s team.”

Chiara entered the house first, followed by Rimona
Stern and Dina Sarid. Petite and dark-haired, Dina was the Office’s top
terrorism analyst, but she possessed a brilliant analytical mind that made her
an asset in any kind of operation. Rimona, a Rubenesque woman with
sandstone-colored hair, had started her career in military intelligence but was
now part of the Office unit that focused exclusively on the Iranian nuclear
program. She also happened to be Shamron’s niece. Indeed, Gabriel’s fondest
memories of Rimona were of a fearless child on a kick scooter careening down the
steep drive of her famous uncle’s house in Tiberias.

Next came a pair of all-purpose field operatives
named Oded and Mordecai, followed by Yaakov Rossman and Yossi Gavish. Yaakov, a
hard figure with black hair and a pockmarked face, was an agent runner by trade
who specialized in the recruitment and maintenance of Arab spies. Yossi was a
senior officer from Research, the Office’s analytical division. Born in London
and educated at Oxford, he still spoke Hebrew with a pronounced British
accent.

From the last car emerged two men—one of late
middle age, the other in the prime of life. The elder of the two was none other
than Eli Lavon: noted archaeologist, hunter of Nazi war criminals and looted
Holocaust assets, and surveillance artist extraordinaire. As usual, Lavon was
wearing many layers of mismatched clothing. He had thinning hair that defied
styling of any sort and the vigilant brown eyes of a terrier. His suede loafers
made no sound as he crossed the entrance hall and entered Gabriel’s warm
embrace. Eli Lavon did nearly everything silently. Shamron once said that the
legendary Office watcher could disappear while shaking your hand.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” asked
Gabriel.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Besides,” Lavon
added, “your leading man said he wouldn’t go anywhere near the Russians unless I
was watching his back.”

Gabriel looked at the tall figure standing just
behind Lavon’s tiny shoulder. His name was Mikhail Abramov. Lanky and fair with
a fine-boned face and eyes the color of glacial ice, he had immigrated to Israel
from Russia as a teenager and joined the Sayeret Matkal, the IDF’s elite special
operations unit. Once described by Shamron as “Gabriel without a conscience,” he
had personally assassinated several of the top terror masterminds from Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He now carried out similar missions on behalf of the
Office, though his enormous talents were not limited strictly to the gun. It was
Mikhail, working with a CIA officer named Sarah Bancroft, who had infiltrated
the personal entourage of one Ivan Kharkov, thus initiating the long and bloody
war between the Office and Ivan’s private army. Had Viktor Orlov not surrendered
Ruzoil to the Kremlin, Mikhail would have died in Russia, along with Gabriel and
Chiara. Indeed, on Mikhail’s porcelain cheekbone was a deep scar left by Ivan’s
sledgehammer fist.

“You don’t have to do this,” Gabriel said, touching
the scar now. “We can find someone else.”

“Like who?” asked Mikhail, glancing around the
room.

“Yossi can do it.”

“Yossi speaks four languages,” Mikhail said, “but
Russian doesn’t happen to be one of them. They could be talking about slitting
his throat, and he would think they were ordering chicken Kiev.”

The members of Gabriel’s fabled team had stayed in
the house before, and so they settled into their old rooms with a minimum of
bickering while Chiara headed into the kitchen to prepare an elaborate reunion
meal. The main entrée was the enormous bass, which she roasted with white wine
and herbs. Gabriel placed Keller to his right at dinner, a deliberate sign to
the others that, for now at least, the Englishman was to be treated as a member
of the family. At first the others were uneasy about his presence, but gradually
they warmed to him. For the most part, they conducted the meal in English for
his benefit. But when discussing their last operation, they reverted to
Hebrew.

“What are they talking about?” Keller asked quietly
of Gabriel.

“A new program on Israeli television.”

“Are you telling me the truth?”

“No.”

Their mood was more subdued than usual, for Ivan’s
shadow hung over them. They did not speak his name at dinner. Instead, they
talked about the
matsav
, the situation. Yossi,
deeply read in the classics and history, served as their guide. He saw a world
spinning dangerously out of control. The promises of the great Arab Awakening
had been exposed as lies, he said, and soon there would be a crescent of radical
Islam stretching from North Africa to Central Asia. America was bankrupt, tired,
and no longer able to lead. It was possible this turbulent new world disorder
would produce a twenty-first-century axis led by China, Iran, and, of course,
Russia. And standing alone, surrounded by a sea of enemies, would be Israel and
the Office.

With that, they cleared away the dishes and
repaired to the sitting room, where Gabriel finally explained why he had brought
them all to England. They knew fragments of it already. Now, standing before
them, a gas fire burning at his back, Gabriel swiftly completed the painting. He
told them everything that had transpired, beginning with the desperate search
for Madeline Hart in France and ending with the deal he had struck with Graham
Seymour the previous evening in Hampstead Heath. There was one aspect of the
affair, however, that he recounted out of sequence. It was his brief encounter
with Madeline Hart, in the hours before her death. He had given Madeline his
word he would bring her home safely. Having failed, he intended to keep that
promise by undoing what was a Russian operation from beginning to end. To
accomplish that, they were going to insert Mikhail into KGB Oil & Gas, he
said. And then they were going to find proof that Madeline Hart had been
murdered as part of a Russian plot to steal British oil from the North Sea.

“How?” asked Eli Lavon incredulously when Gabriel
had finished speaking. “How in God’s name are we going to get Mikhail inside a
Kremlin-owned oil company run by Russian intelligence?”

“We’ll find a way,” said Gabriel. “We always
do.”

T
he
real work began the next morning when the members of Gabriel’s team began
secretly burrowing into the state-owned Russian energy company known as Volgatek
Oil & Gas. At the outset, the bulk of their material came from open sources
such as business journals, press releases, and academic papers written by
experts in the rough-and-tumble Russian oil industry. In addition, Gabriel
requested help from Unit 1400, the Israeli electronic eavesdropping service. As
expected, the Unit discovered that Volgatek’s Moscow-based computer networks and
communications were protected by high-quality Russian firewalls—the same
firewalls, interestingly enough, used by the Kremlin, the Russian military, and
the SVR. Late in the day, however, the Unit managed to hack into the computers
of a Volgatek field office in Gdansk, where the company owned an important
refinery that produced much of Poland’s gasoline. The material was forwarded
directly to the safe house in Surrey. Mikhail and Eli Lavon, the only members of
the team who spoke Russian, handled the translation. Mikhail dismissed the
intelligence as a dry hole, but Lavon was more optimistic. By getting their foot
in the door of Gdansk, he said, they would learn much about how Volgatek
operated beyond the boundaries of Mother Russia.

By instinct, they approached their target as if it
were a terrorist organization. And the first order of business when confronted
with a new terror group or cell, Dina reminded them needlessly, was to identify
the structure and key personnel. It was tempting to focus on those who resided
at the top of the food chain, she said, but the middle managers, foot soldiers,
couriers, innkeepers, and drivers usually proved far more valuable in the end.
They were the passed over, the forgotten, the neglected. They carried grudges,
harbored resentments, and oftentimes spent more money than they earned. This
made them far easier targets for recruitment than the men who flew on private
planes, drank champagne by the bucketful, and had a stable of Russian
prostitutes at their beck and call, no matter where they went in the world.

At the top of the organization chart was Gennady
Lazarev, the former Russian nuclear scientist and KGB informant who had served
as Viktor Orlov’s deputy at Ruzoil. Lazarev’s trusted deputy was Dmitry Bershov,
and his chief of European operations was Alexei Voronin. Both were former
officers of the KGB, though Voronin was by far the more presentable of the two.
He spoke several European languages fluently, including English, which he had
acquired while working in the KGB’s London
rezidentura
during the last days of the Cold War.

The rest of Volgatek’s hierarchy proved harder to
identify, which surely was no accident. Yaakov likened the company’s profile to
that of the Office. The name of the chief was public knowledge, but the names of
his key deputies, and the tasks they carried out, were kept secret or concealed
beneath layers of deception and misdirection. Fortunately, the e-mail traffic
from the Gdansk field office allowed the team to identify several other key
players inside the company, including its chief of security, Pavel Zhirov. His
name appeared in no company documents, and all attempts to locate a photograph
were fruitless. On the team’s organizational chart, Zhirov was a man without a
face.

As the days wore on, it became clear to the team
that the enterprise Zhirov protected was about more than just oil. The company
was part of a larger Kremlin stratagem to turn Russia into a global energy
superpower, a Eurasian Saudi Arabia, and to resurrect the Russian Empire from
the ruins of the Soviet Union. Eastern and Western Europe were already overly
dependent on Russian natural gas. Volgatek’s mission was to extend Russian
dominance over Europe’s energy market through its purchases of oil refineries.
And now, thanks to Jeremy Fallon, it had a foothold in the North Sea that would
eventually send billions in oil profits gushing into the Kremlin. Yes, Volgatek
Oil & Gas was about Russian avarice, the team agreed. But it was first and
foremost about Russian revanchism.

But how to plant an agent inside such an
organization? It was Eli Lavon who found a possible solution, which he explained
to Gabriel while they were walking in the tangled garden. After purchasing the
refinery in Gdansk, he said, Volgatek had made a local Polish hire to serve as
the refinery’s nominal director. In practice, the Pole had absolutely nothing to
do with the day-to-day operations of the refinery. He was window dressing, a
bouquet of flowers designed to smooth over hurt Polish feelings over the Russian
bear gobbling up a vital economic asset. Furthermore, Lavon explained, Poland
wasn’t the only place Volgatek hired local helpers. They did it in Hungary,
Lithuania, and Cuba as well. None of those managers fared any better than the
one from Gdansk. To a man, they were all marginalized, ignored, and cut out of
the loop.

“They’re walking coffee cups,” said Lavon.