The English Girl: A Novel Read online

  For the next three years, Gabriel and the other Wrath of God operatives stalked their prey across Europe and the Middle East. Armed with a .22-caliber Beretta, a soft-spoken weapon suitable for killing at close range, Gabriel personally assassinated six members of Black September. Whenever possible he shot them eleven times, one bullet for each Israeli butchered in Munich. When he finally returned home, his temples were the color of ash and his face was that of a man twenty years his senior. No longer able to produce original work, he went to Venice to study the craft of restoration. Then, when he was rested, he went back to work for Shamron. In the years that followed, he carried out some of the most fabled operations in the history of Israeli intelligence. Now, after many years of restless wandering, he had finally returned to Jerusalem. No one was more pleased by this than Shamron, who loved Gabriel as a son and treated the apartment on Narkiss Street as though it were his own. Once, Gabriel might have chafed under the pressure of Shamron’s constant presence, but no more. The great Ari Shamron was eternal, but the vessel in which his spirit resided would not last forever.

  Nothing had done more damage to Shamron’s health than his relentless smoking. It was a habit he acquired as a young man in eastern Poland, and it had grown worse after he had come to Palestine, where he fought in the war that led to Israel’s independence. Now, as he described his meeting with the prime minister, he flicked open his old Zippo lighter and used it to ignite another one of his foul-smelling cigarettes.

  “The prime minister is on edge, more so than usual. I suppose he has a right to be. The great Arab Awakening has plunged the entire region into chaos. And the Iranians are growing closer to realizing their nuclear dreams. At some point soon, they will enter a zone of immunity, making it impossible for us to act militarily without the help of the Americans.” Shamron closed his lighter with a snap and looked at Gabriel, who had resumed work on the painting. “Are you listening to me?”

  “I’m hanging on your every word.”

  “Prove it.”

  Gabriel repeated Shamron’s last statement verbatim. Shamron smiled. He regarded Gabriel’s flawless memory as one of his finest accomplishments. He twirled the Zippo lighter in his fingertips. Two turns to the right, two turns to the left.

  “The problem is that the American president refuses to lay down any hard-and-fast red lines. He says he will not allow the Iranians to build nuclear weapons. But that declaration is meaningless if the Iranians have the capability to build them in a short period of time.”

  “Like the Japanese.”

  “The Japanese aren’t ruled by apocalyptic Shia mullahs,” Shamron said. “If the American president isn’t careful, his two most important foreign policy achievements will be a nuclear Iran and the restoration of the Islamic caliphate.”

  “Welcome to the post-American world, Ari.”

  “Which is why I think we’re foolish to leave our security in their hands. But that’s not the prime minister’s only problem,” Shamron added. “The generals aren’t sure they can destroy enough of the program to make a military strike effective. And King Saul Boulevard, under the tutelage of your friend Uzi Navot, is telling the prime minister that a unilateral war with the Persians would be a catastrophe of biblical proportions.”

  King Saul Boulevard was the address of Israel’s secret intelligence service. It had a long and deliberately misleading name that had very little to do with the true nature of its work. Even retired agents like Gabriel and Shamron referred to it as “the Office” and nothing else.

  “Uzi is the one who sees the raw intelligence every day,” said Gabriel.

  “I see it, too. Not all of it,” Shamron added hastily, “but enough to convince me that Uzi’s calculations about how much time we have might be flawed.”

  “Math was never Uzi’s strong suit. But when he was in the field, he never made mistakes.”

  “That’s because he rarely put himself in a position where it was possible to make a mistake.” Shamron lapsed into silence and watched the wind moving in the eucalyptus tree beyond the balustrade of Gabriel’s terrace. “I’ve always said that a career without controversy is not a proper career at all. I’ve had my share, and so have you.”

  “And I have the scars to prove it.”

  “And the accolades, too,” Shamron said. “The prime minister is concerned the Office is too cautious when it comes to Iran. Yes, we’ve inserted viruses into their computers and eliminated a handful of their scientists, but nothing has gone boom lately. The prime minister would like Uzi to produce another Operation Masterpiece.”

  Masterpiece was the code name for a joint Israeli, American, and British operation that resulted in the destruction of four secret Iranian enrichment facilities. It had occurred on Uzi Navot’s watch, but within the corridors of King Saul Boulevard, it was regarded as one of Gabriel’s finest hours.

  “Opportunities like Masterpiece don’t come along every day, Ari.”

  “That’s true,” Shamron conceded. “But I’ve always believed that most opportunities are earned rather than bestowed. And so does the prime minister.”

  “Has he lost confidence in Uzi?”

  “Not yet. But he wanted to know whether I’d lost mine.”

  “What did you say?”

  “What choice did I have? I was the one who recommended him for the job.”

  “So you gave him your blessing?”

  “It was conditional.”

  “How so?”

  “I reminded the prime minister that the person I really wanted in the job wasn’t interested.” Shamron shook his head slowly. “You are the only man in the history of the Office who has turned down a chance to be the director.”

  “There’s a first for everything, Ari.”

  “Does that mean you might reconsider?”

  “Is that why you’re here?”

  “I thought you might enjoy the pleasure of my company,” Shamron countered. “And the prime minister and I were wondering whether you might be willing to do a bit of outreach to one of our closest allies.”

  “Which one?”

  “Graham Seymour dropped into town unannounced. He’d like a word.”

  Gabriel turned to face Shamron. “A word about what?” he asked after a moment.

  “He wouldn’t say, but apparently it’s urgent.” Shamron walked over to the easel and squinted at the pristine patch of canvas where Gabriel had been working. “It looks new again.”

  “That’s the point.”

  “Is there any chance you could do the same for me?”

  “Sorry, Ari,” said Gabriel, touching Shamron’s deeply crevassed cheek, “but I’m afraid you’re beyond repair.”

  4

  KING DAVID HOTEL, JERUSALEM

  On the afternoon of July 22, 1946, the extremist Zionist group known as the Irgun detonated a large bomb in the King David Hotel, headquarters of all British military and civilian forces in Palestine. The attack, a reprisal for the arrest of several hundred Jewish fighters, killed ninety-one people, including twenty-eight British subjects who had ignored a telephone warning to evacuate the hotel. Though universally condemned, the bombing would quickly prove to be one of the most effective acts of political violence ever committed. Within two years, the British had retreated from Palestine, and the modern State of Israel, once an almost unimaginable Zionist dream, was a reality.

  Among those fortunate enough to survive the bombing was a young British intelligence officer named Arthur Seymour, a veteran of the wartime Double Cross program who had recently been transferred to Palestine to spy on the Jewish underground. Seymour should have been in his office at the time of the attack but was running a few minutes late after meeting with an informant in the Old City. He heard the detonation as he was passing through the Jaffa Gate and watched in horror as part of the hotel collapsed. The image would haunt Seymour for the remainder of his life and shape the course of his career. Virulently anti-Israeli and fluent in Arabic, he developed uncomfortably close ties t
o many of Israel’s enemies. He was a regular guest of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and an early admirer of a young Palestinian revolutionary named Yasir Arafat.

  Despite his pro-Arab sympathies, the Office regarded Arthur Seymour as one of MI6’s most capable officers in the Middle East. And so it came as something of a surprise when Seymour’s only son, Graham, chose a career at MI5 rather than the more glamorous Secret Intelligence Service. Seymour the Younger, as he was known early in his career, served first in counterintelligence, working against the KGB in London. Then, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise in Islamic fanaticism, he was promoted to chief of counterterrorism. Now, as MI5’s deputy director, he had been forced to rely on his expertise in both disciplines. There were more Russian spies plying their trade in London these days than at the height of the Cold War. And thanks to mistakes by successive British governments, the United Kingdom was now home to several thousand Islamic militants from the Arab world and Asia. Seymour referred to London as “Kandahar on the Thames.” Privately, he worried that his country was sliding closer to the edge of a civilizational abyss.

  Though Graham Seymour had inherited his father’s passion for pure espionage, he shared none of his disdain for the State of Israel. Indeed, under his guidance, MI5 had forged close ties with the Office and, in particular, with Gabriel Allon. The two men regarded themselves as members of a secret brotherhood who did the unpleasant chores no one else was willing to do and worried about the consequences later. They had fought for one another, bled for one another, and in some cases killed for one another. They were as close as two spies from opposing services could be, which meant they distrusted each other only a little.

  “Is there anyone in this hotel who doesn’t know who you are?” Seymour asked, shaking Gabriel’s outstretched hand as though it belonged to someone he was meeting for the first time.

  “The girl at reception asked if I was here for the Greenberg bar mitzvah.”

  Seymour gave a discreet smile. With his pewter-colored locks and sturdy jaw, he looked the archetype of the British colonial baron, a man who decided important matters and never poured his own tea.

  “Inside or out?” asked Gabriel.

  “Out,” said Seymour.

  They sat down at a table outside on the terrace, Gabriel facing the hotel, Seymour the walls of the Old City. It was a few minutes after eleven, the lull between breakfast and lunch. Gabriel drank only coffee but Seymour ordered lavishly. His wife was an enthusiastic but dreadful cook. For Seymour, airline food was a treat, and a hotel brunch, even from the kitchen of the King David, was an occasion to be savored. So, too, it seemed, was the view of the Old City.

  “You might find this hard to believe,” he said between bites of his omelet, “but this is the first time I’ve ever set foot in your country.”

  “I know,” Gabriel replied. “It’s all in your file.”

  “Interesting reading?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing compared to what your service has on me.”

  “How could it be? I am but a humble servant of Her Majesty’s Security Service. You, on the other hand, are a legend. After all,” Seymour added, lowering his voice, “how many intelligence officers can say they spared the world an apocalypse?”

  Gabriel glanced over his shoulder and stared at the golden Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third-holiest shrine, sparkling in the crystalline Jerusalem sunlight. Five months earlier, in a secret chamber 167 feet beneath the surface of the Temple Mount, he had discovered a massive bomb that, had it detonated, would have brought down the entire plateau. He had also discovered twenty-two pillars from Solomon’s Temple of Jerusalem, thus proving beyond doubt that the ancient Jewish sanctuary, described in Kings and Chronicles, had in fact existed. Though Gabriel’s name never appeared in the press coverage of the momentous discovery, his involvement in the affair was well known in certain circles of the Western intelligence community. It was also known that his closest friend, the noted biblical archaeologist and Office operative Eli Lavon, had nearly died trying to save the pillars from destruction.

  “You’re damn lucky that bomb didn’t go off,” Seymour said. “If it had, several million Muslims would have been on your borders in a matter of hours. After that . . .” Seymour’s voice trailed off.

  “It would have been lights out on the enterprise known as the State of Israel,” Gabriel said, finishing Seymour’s thought for him. “Which is exactly what the Iranians and their friends in Hezbollah wanted to happen.”

  “I can’t imagine what it must have been like when you saw those pillars for the first time.”

  “To be honest, Graham, I didn’t have time to enjoy the moment. I was too busy trying to keep Eli alive.”

  “How is he?”

  “He spent two months in the hospital, but he looks almost as good as new. He’s actually back at work.”

  “For the Office?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “He’s digging in the Western Wall Tunnel again. I can arrange a private tour if you like. In fact, if you’re interested, I can show you the secret passage that leads directly into the Temple Mount.”

  “I’m not sure my government would approve.” Seymour lapsed into silence while a waiter refilled their coffee cups. Then, when they were alone again, he said, “So the rumor is true after all.”

  “Which rumor is that?”

  “The one about the prodigal son finally returning home. It’s funny,” he added, smiling sadly, “but I always assumed you’d spend the rest of your life walking the cliffs of Cornwall.”

  “It’s beautiful there, Graham. But England is your home, not mine.”

  “Sometimes even I don’t feel at home there any longer,” Seymour said. “Helen and I recently purchased a villa in Portugal. Soon I’ll be an exile, like you used to be.”

  “How soon?” asked Gabriel.

  “Nothing’s imminent,” Seymour answered. “But eventually all good things must end.”

  “You’ve had a great career, Graham.”

  “Have I? It’s difficult to measure success in the security business, isn’t it? We’re judged on things that don’t happen—the secrets that aren’t stolen, the buildings that don’t explode. It can be a profoundly unsatisfying way of earning a living.”

  “What are you going to do in Portugal?”

  “Helen will attempt to poison me with her exotic cooking, and I will paint dreadful watercolor landscapes.”

  “I never knew you painted.”

  “For good reason.” Seymour frowned at the view as though it was far beyond the reach of his brush and palette. “My father would be spinning in his grave if he knew I was here.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “I was wondering whether you might be willing to find something for a friend of mine.”

  “Does the friend have a name?”

  Seymour made no reply. Instead, he opened his attaché case and withdrew an eight-by-ten photograph, which he handed to Gabriel. It showed an attractive young woman staring directly into the camera, holding a three-day-old copy of the International Herald Tribune.

  “Madeline Hart?” asked Gabriel.

  Seymour nodded. Then he handed Gabriel a sheet of A4 paper. On it was a single sentence composed in a plain sans serif typeface:

  You have seven days, or the girl dies.

  “Shit,” said Gabriel softly.

  “I’m afraid it gets better.”

  Coincidentally, the management of the King David had placed Graham Seymour, the only son of Arthur Seymour, in the same wing of the hotel that had been destroyed in 1946. In fact, Seymour’s room was just down the hall from the one his father had used as an office during the waning days of the British Mandate in Palestine. Arriving, they found the DO NOT DISTURB sign still hanging from the latch, along with a sack containing the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz. Seymour led Gabriel inside. Then, satisfied the room had not been entered in his absence, he inserted a DVD into his notebook computer and clicked PLAY. A f
ew seconds later Madeline Hart, missing British subject and employee of Britain’s governing party, appeared on the screen.

  “I made love to Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster for the first time at the Party conference in Manchester in October 2012 . . .”

  5

  KING DAVID HOTEL, JERUSALEM

  The video was seven minutes and twelve seconds in length. Throughout, Madeline’s gaze remained fixed on a point slightly to the camera’s left, as if she were responding to questions posed by a television interviewer. She appeared frightened and fatigued as, reluctantly, she described how she had met the prime minister during one of his visits to the Party’s Millbank headquarters. Lancaster had expressed admiration for Madeline’s work and on two occasions invited her to Downing Street to personally brief him. It was at the end of the second visit when he admitted that his interest in Madeline was more than professional. Their first sexual encounter had been a hurried affair in a Manchester hotel room. After that, Madeline had been spirited into the Downing Street residence by an old friend of the prime minister, always when Diana Lancaster was away from London.

  “And now,” said Seymour gloomily as the computer screen turned to black, “the prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is being punished for his sins with a crude attempt at blackmail.”

  “There’s nothing crude about it, Graham. Whoever’s behind this knew the prime minister was involved in an extramarital affair. And then they managed to make his lover disappear without a trace from Corsica. They’re obviously extremely sophisticated.”