The Other Woman: A Novel Read online

  “It wasn’t a street, it was the busiest square in Bern.”

  “The Bahnhofplatz?” she said dismissively. “It’s not exactly Trafalgar Square or Piccadilly. And what was he doing in Bern in the first place? He told me he was planning to spend the weekend in Vienna with a good book. Clement Attlee. Can you imagine? The last book my husband read was a biography of Clement Attlee.”

  “It’s not uncommon for a Head of Station to operate beyond the boundaries of his country.”

  “I’m sure the Bern Head might have a different opinion on that. In fact, why don’t we ask him?” Melinda Hughes glanced toward the knot of mourners near her husband’s open grave. “He’s standing right over there.”

  Seymour made no reply.

  “I’m not some neophyte, Graham. I’ve been a service wife for nearly thirty years.”

  “Then surely you realize there are certain matters I cannot discuss. Perhaps someday, but not now.”

  Her gaze was reproving. “You disappoint me, Graham. How terribly predictable. Hiding behind your veil of secrecy, the way Alistair always did. Every time I asked him about something he didn’t want to talk about, the answer was always the same. ‘Sorry, my love, but you know the rules.’”

  “They’re real, I’m afraid. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to function.”

  But Melinda Hughes was no longer listening, she was staring at Rebecca Manning. “They were lovers once, in Baghdad. Did you know that? For some reason, Alistair was quite fond of her. Now she’s going to be the next ‘C,’ and Alistair is dead.”

  “I can assure you, the next director-general hasn’t been chosen.”

  “You know, for a spy, you’re a terrible liar. Alistair was much better.” Melinda Hughes stopped suddenly and turned to face Seymour beneath the umbrella. “Tell me something, Graham. What was my husband really doing in Bern? Was he involved with another woman? Or was he spying for the Russians?”

  They had reached the edge of the car park. The Americans were clambering noisily into a hired motor coach, as if at the conclusion of a company picnic. Seymour returned Melinda Hughes to the care of her family and, lowering his umbrella, made for his limousine. Rebecca Manning had positioned herself next to the rear door. She was lighting a fresh L&B.

  “What was that all about?” she asked quietly.

  “She had a few questions regarding her husband’s death.”

  “So do the Americans.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “Was it really?”

  Seymour made no reply.

  “And that other matter?” asked Rebecca. “The one we discussed in Washington?”

  “The inquiry has concluded.”

  “And?”

  “There was nothing to it.” Seymour glanced at Alistair Hughes’s grave. “It’s dead and buried. Go back to Washington and tell anyone who’ll listen. Get the spigot open again.”

  She dropped her cigarette to the wet earth and started toward a waiting car.

  “Rebecca?” Seymour called after her.

  She stopped and turned. In the half-light, with the rain falling weakly, he saw her face as if for the first time. She looked like someone he had met a long time ago, in another life.

  “Is it true about you and Alistair?” he asked.

  “What did Melinda tell you?”

  “That you were lovers in Baghdad.”

  She laughed. “Alistair and me? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Seymour lowered himself into the back of his car and through the rain-spattered window watched her walk away. Even by the lofty standards of MI6, he thought, she was a damn good liar.

  26

  Hampshire, England

  The text message arrived on Graham Seymour’s BlackBerry as he was nearing Crawley. It was from Nigel Whitcombe, his personal aide and runner of off-the-record errands. “Change in plan,” Seymour told his driver, and a few minutes later they were racing south on the A23 toward Brighton. From there, they moved westward along the seacoast, through Shoreham and Worthing and Chichester and Portsmouth, until finally they arrived in tiny Gosport.

  The ancient fortress, with its empty moat and walls of gray stone, was reached by a narrow track that bisected the first fairway of the Gosport & Stokes Bay Golf Club. Seymour’s car passed through the outer checkpoint, then a gate that led to an internal courtyard. Long ago, it had been converted into a car park for the Directing Staff. Its longest-serving member was George Halliday, the bursar. He was standing straight as a ramrod in his nook in the west wing.

  “Morning, sir. What a pleasant surprise. I wish the Cross had given us at least a modicum of warning that you were coming.”

  “We’re a little out of sorts at the moment, George. Today was the burial.”

  “Ah, yes, of course. A terrible business, that. I remember when he came down for the IONEC. A good lad. And smart as a whip, wasn’t he? How’s the wife?”

  “As well as can be expected.”

  “Shall I open your rooms, sir?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. I won’t be staying long.”

  “I assume you’re here to see our guest. The Cross didn’t give us any warning about him, either. Mr. Whitcombe left him in a basket on our doorstep and made a run for it.”

  “I’ll have a word with him,” promised Seymour.

  “Please do.”

  “And our guest? Where is he?”

  “I locked him away in Mr. Marlowe’s old room.”

  Seymour climbed a flight of stone steps to the residential quarters of the west wing. The room at the end of the central corridor contained a single bed, a writing desk, and a simple armoire. Gabriel was standing at the arrow slit of a window, staring across the granite sea.

  “We missed you at the service,” said Seymour. “Half the CIA was there. You should have come.”

  “It wouldn’t have been right.”

  “Why not?”

  Gabriel turned and looked at Seymour for the first time. “Because I’m the reason Alistair Hughes is dead. And for that,” he added, “I am eternally sorry.”

  Seymour frowned thoughtfully. “A couple of hours ago in a cemetery not far from here, Melinda Hughes asked me whether her husband was a Russian spy.”

  “And what did you tell her?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s good. Because Alistair Hughes wasn’t a spy. He was a patient,” said Gabriel. “At Privatklinik Schloss.”

  27

  Fort Monckton, Hampshire

  The fort was called Monckton. Officially, it was run by the Ministry of Defense and known vaguely as the No. 1 Military Training Establishment. Unofficially, it was MI6’s primary school for fledgling spies. Most of the instruction took place in the lecture halls and laboratories of the main wing, but beyond the ancient walls were a shooting range, a helipad, tennis courts, a squash facility, and a croquet pitch. Guards from the Ministry of Defense patrolled the grounds. None followed Gabriel and Graham Seymour as they set out along the beach, Gabriel in denim and leather, Seymour in his funereal gray suit and overcoat and a pair of Wellington boots that George Halliday had dug from the stores.

  “Privatklinik Schloss?”

  “It’s very exclusive. And very private,” added Gabriel, “as the name would suggest. Hughes was seeing a doctor there. Dr. Klara Brünner. She was treating him for bipolar disorder and severe depression, which explains the medication we found in his apartment. She supplied it to him off the books so no one would know. She saw him the last Friday of every month, after hours. He used an alias when he visited. Called himself Richard Baker. It’s not unusual. Privatklinik Schloss is that sort of place.”

  “Says who?”

  “Christoph Bittel of the NDB.”

  “Can he be trusted?”

  “Think of him as our Swiss banker.”

  “Who else knows?”

  “The Russians, of course.” On the golf course a brave foursome paused from their labors on a windswept putting green to watch Gabriel an
d Graham Seymour pass. “They also knew that Alistair had neglected to inform his superiors in London about his illness, lest it derail his career. Moscow Center doubtless considered using the information to coerce him into working for them, which is exactly what you or I would have done in their position. But that’s not what happened.”

  “What did happen?”

  “They sat on it until Dmitri Sokolov, a known Moscow Center hood with a taste for kompromat, handed Hughes an envelope in the lobby of the Schweizerhof Hotel in Bern. If I had to guess, the envelope contained photos of Hughes entering and leaving the clinic. That’s why he accepted it instead of throwing it back in Dmitri’s face. And that’s why he tried to leave Bern in a panic. By the way, Dmitri is back in Moscow. The Center yanked him a couple of days after Alistair was killed.”

  They had reached the Gosport Lifeboat Station. Seymour slowed to a stop. “It was all an elaborate subterfuge designed to make us think Alistair was a spy?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “Why?” asked Seymour.

  “Vladimir Vladimirovich Gribkov. You remember VeeVee, don’t you, Graham? VeeVee wanted a cottage in the Cotswolds and ten million pounds in a London bank. In exchange, he was going to give you the name of a Russian mole at the pinnacle of the Anglo-American intelligence establishment.”

  “It rings a distant bell.”

  “The Russians got to VeeVee before he could defect,” Gabriel continued. “But from their point of view, it was too late. Gribkov had already told MI6 about the mole. The damage was already done. Moscow Center had two choices. They could sit on their hands and hope for the best, or they could take active measures to protect their investment. They chose active measures. Russians,” said Gabriel, “don’t believe in hope.”

  They left the beach and followed a single-lane road that cut through a green field like a scar. Gabriel walked along the pavement. Seymour, in his Wellington boots, tramped through the grassy verge.

  “And Konstantin Kirov?” he asked. “How does he fit in?”

  “That involves a certain amount of supposition on my part.”

  “So has the rest of it. What’s stopping you now?”

  “Kirov,” said Gabriel, ignoring Seymour’s skepticism, “was good as gold.”

  “And the secret of all secrets he claimed to have discovered? The one that required him to defect?”

  “It was chickenfeed. Very convincing chickenfeed,” added Gabriel, “but chickenfeed nonetheless.”

  “Spread by Moscow Center?”

  “Of course. It’s possible they also whispered something into his ear to make him jumpy, but it probably wasn’t necessary. Heathcliff was jumpy enough already. All they had to do was send him on an errand, and he would make the leap on his own.”

  “They wanted him to defect?”

  “No. They wanted him to try to defect. There’s an enormous difference.”

  “Why let him leave Russia at all? Why not hang him by his heels and let the secrets fall out of his pockets? Why not put a bullet in the nape of his neck and be done with it?”

  “Because they wanted to get a little mileage out of him first. All they needed was the address of the safe flat where I would be waiting, but that was the easy part. The distribution list was a mile long, and the mole’s name was certainly on it. When Heathcliff arrived in Vienna, they had an assassin in place and a surveillance team with a long-lens camera in the building next door.”

  “I’m still listening,” said Seymour grudgingly.

  “Killing Heathcliff beneath my window and splashing my photo across the Internet had one obvious benefit. It made it seem as though I was the one who had ordered the murder of an SVR agent in the middle of Vienna, thus weakening the Office. But that’s not the main reason they did it. They wanted me to launch an investigation and identify Alistair Hughes as the likely source of the leak, and I stepped into their trap.”

  “But why did they kill him?”

  “Because keeping him around was too dangerous to the overall operation, the goal of which was to throw us off the scent of the real mole. After all, there’s no need to hunt for a mole if the mole is dead.”

  An unmarked van waited at the end of the lane, two men in front. “Don’t worry,” said Seymour, “they’re mine.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Seymour turned without answering and started back toward the lifeboat station. “The night you came to my house in Belgravia, I asked for the name of the person who told you that Alistair was traveling frequently to Switzerland. You pointedly refused to tell me.”

  “It was Werner Schwarz,” said Gabriel.

  “The same Werner Schwarz who works for the Austrian BVT?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “What’s the nature of your relationship?”

  “We pay him money, and he gives us information. That’s how it works in our business.” A bicycle squeaked toward them along the lane, ridden by a man with a crimson face. “You’re not carrying a gun, are you?”

  “He’s one of mine, too.” The bicycle rattled past. “Where do you suppose he is, this mole of yours? Is he in my service?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Langley?”

  “Why not? Or maybe it’s someone in the White House. Someone close to the president.”

  “Or maybe it’s the president himself.”

  “Let’s not get carried away, Graham.”

  “But that’s the danger, isn’t it? The danger that we chase our tails and tie ourselves in knots. You’re in the wilderness of mirrors. It’s a place where you can arrange the so-called facts to come to any conclusion you desire. You’ve put forward a compelling circumstantial case, I’ll grant you that, but if one element crumbles, all of it does.”

  “Alistair Hughes wasn’t a Russian spy, he was a patient at the Privatklinik Schloss in the Swiss village of Münchenbuchsee. And someone told the Russians.”

  “Who?”

  “If I had to guess,” said Gabriel, “it was the mole. The real mole.”

  They had returned to the beach. In both directions it was deserted. Seymour walked down to the water’s edge. Wavelets lapped at his Wellington boots.

  “I suppose this is the part where you tell me you’re suspending our relationship until the real mole is discovered.”

  “I can’t work with you if there’s a direct pipeline running between Langley, Vauxhall Cross, and Moscow Center. We’re reassessing several operations now under way in Syria and Iran. Our assumption,” said Gabriel, “is that they’re blown to high heaven.”

  “That’s your assumption to make,” Seymour replied pointedly. “But it is the official position of the Secret Intelligence Service that we are not now, nor have we ever been, harboring a Russian mole in our midst.” He paused, then asked, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes,” said Gabriel, “I believe I do. You’d like me to find the mole in your service that doesn’t exist.”

  The van had moved from the end of the lane to the small car park at the lifeboat station. Seymour didn’t notice; he was staring across the sea toward the Isle of Wight.

  “I could give you a list of names,” he said after a moment, “but it would be long and of no use. Not without the power to strap someone to a chair and ruin his career.”

  “I already have a list,” said Gabriel.

  “Do you?” asked Seymour, surprised. “And how many names are on it?”

  “Only one.”

  28

  Vienna Woods, Austria

  The annals of the ensuing operation—it had no code name, then or ever—would record that the first blow in the quest for the mole would be struck not by Gabriel but by his luckless predecessor, Uzi Navot. The time was half past two that same afternoon, the place was the same timbered lodge at the edge of the Vienna Woods where Navot had dined some three weeks previously. The seeming carelessness of his tradecraft was not without forethought. Navot wanted Werner Schwarz to think there was nothing out of the
ordinary. For the sake of his security, he wanted the Russians to think the same.

  Prior to his arrival in Vienna, however, Navot had left nothing to chance. He had come not from the East and the nations of the long-dead Warsaw Pact but from the West—from France and northern Italy and, eventually, into Austria itself. He had not made the journey alone; Mikhail Abramov had acted as his traveling companion and bodyguard. Inside the restaurant they sat apart, Navot at his usual table, the one he had reserved under the name Laffont, Mikhail near a window. His jacket was unbuttoned for easy access to his gun, which he wore on his left hip. Navot had a gun of his own, a Barak SP-21. It had been a long time since he had carried one, and he was dubious about his ability to deploy the weapon in an emergency without killing himself or Mikhail in the process. Gabriel was right; Navot had never been all that dangerous with a firearm. But the gentle pressure of the holster against his lower spine felt comforting nonetheless.

  “A bottle of Grüner Veltliner?” asked the corpulent proprietor, and Navot, in the accent and manner of Monsieur Laffont, the French travel writer of Breton descent, replied, “In a minute, please. I’ll wait for my friend.”

  Ten more minutes passed with no sign of him. Navot, however, was not concerned; he was receiving regular updates from the watchers. Werner had caught a bit of traffic leaving the city. There was no evidence to suggest he was being followed by elements of the service that employed him, or by anyone who answered to Moscow Center.

  Finally, a car pulled up outside Mikhail’s window, and a single figure, Werner Schwarz, emerged. When he entered the restaurant, the proprietor pumped his hand vigorously, as though trying to draw water from a well, and led him to the table where Navot sat. Werner was clearly disappointed by the absence of wine. There was only a small decorative box from Demel, the Viennese chocolatier.

  “Open it,” said Navot.

  “Here?”

  “Why not?”