The English Spy Page 4

  “What does the departure board say about my flight?” she asked.

  “Delayed.”

  “Can’t you do something to speed things up?”

  “You overestimate my powers.”

  “False modesty doesn’t suit you, darling.”

  Gabriel typed another brief message into his BlackBerry and sent it to King Saul Boulevard. A moment later the device vibrated softly with the reply.

  “Well?” asked Chiara.

  “Watch the board.”

  Chiara opened her eyes. The status box for El Al Flight 386 still read DELAYED. Thirty seconds later it changed to BOARDING.

  “Too bad you can’t stop the war so easily,” Chiara said.

  “Only Hamas can stop the war.”

  She gathered up her carry-on bag and a stack of glossy magazines and rose carefully to her feet. “Be a good boy,” she said. “And if someone asks you for a favor, remember those three lovely words.”

  “Find someone else.”

  Chiara smiled. Then she kissed Gabriel with surprising urgency.

  “Come home, Gabriel.”

  “Soon.”

  “No,” she said. “Come home now.”

  “You’d better hurry, Chiara. Otherwise, you’ll miss your flight.”

  She kissed him one last time. Then she turned away without another word and boarded the plane.

  Gabriel waited until Chiara’s flight was safely airborne before leaving the terminal and making his way to Fiumicino’s chaotic parking garage. His anonymous German sedan was at the far end of the third deck, the front end facing out, lest he had reason to flee the garage in a hurry. As always, he searched the undercarriage for evidence of a concealed explosive before sliding behind the wheel and starting the engine. An Italian pop song blasted from the radio, one of those silly tunes Chiara was always singing to herself when she thought no one else was listening. Gabriel switched to the BBC, but it was filled with news about the war so he lowered the volume. There would be time enough for war later, he thought. For the next few weeks there would only be the Caravaggio.

  He crossed the Tiber over the Ponte Cavour and made his way to the Via Gregoriana. The old Office safe flat was at the far end of the street, near the top of the Spanish Steps. He squeezed the sedan into an empty spot along the curb and retrieved his Beretta 9mm pistol from the glove box before climbing out. The chill night air smelled of frying garlic and faintly of wet leaves, the smell of Rome in autumn. Something about it always made Gabriel think of death.

  He walked past the entrance of his building, past the awnings of the Hassler Villa Medici Hotel, to the Church of the Trinità dei Monti. A moment later, after determining he was not being followed, he returned to his apartment building. A single energy-efficient bulb burned weakly in the foyer; he moved through its sphere of light and climbed the darkened staircase. As he stepped onto the third-floor landing, he froze. The door of the flat was ajar, and from within came the sound of drawers opening and closing. Calmly, he drew the Beretta from the small of his back and used the barrel to slowly push open the door. At first, he could see no sign of the intruder. Then the door yielded another inch and he glimpsed Graham Seymour standing at the kitchen counter, an unopened bottle of Gavi in one hand and a corkscrew in the other. Gabriel slipped the gun into his coat pocket and went inside. And in his head he was thinking of three lovely words.

  Find someone else . . .

  6

  VIA GREGORIANA, ROME

  PERHAPS YOU’D BETTER SEE TO THIS, Gabriel. Otherwise, someone’s liable to get hurt.”

  Seymour surrendered the bottle of wine and the corkscrew and leaned against the kitchen counter. He wore gray flannel trousers, a herringbone jacket, and a blue dress shirt with French cuffs. The absence of personal aides or a security detail suggested he had traveled to Rome using a pseudonymous passport. It was a bad sign. The chief of MI6 traveled clandestinely only when he had a serious problem.

  “How did you get in here?” asked Gabriel.

  Seymour fished a key from the pocket of his trousers. Attached was the simple black medallion so beloved by Housekeeping, the Office division that procured and managed safe properties.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Uzi gave it to me yesterday in London.”

  “And the code for the alarm? I suppose he gave you that, too.”

  Seymour recited the eight-digit number.

  “That’s a violation of Office protocol.”

  “There were extenuating circumstances. Besides,” added Seymour, “after all the operations we’ve done together, I’m practically a member of the family.”

  “Even family members knock before entering a room.”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  Gabriel removed the cork from the bottle, poured out two glasses, and handed one to Seymour. The Englishman raised his glass a fraction of an inch and said, “To fatherhood.”

  “It’s bad luck to drink to children who haven’t been born yet, Graham.”

  “Then what shall we drink to?”

  When Gabriel offered no answer, Seymour went into the sitting room. From its picture window it was possible to see the bell tower of the church and the top of the Spanish Steps. He stood there for a moment gazing out across the rooftops as though he were admiring the rolling hills of his country estate from the terrace of his manor house. With his pewter-colored locks and sturdy jaw, Graham Seymour was the archetypal British civil servant, a man who’d been born, bred, and educated to lead. He was handsome, but not too; he was tall, but not remarkably so. He made others feel inferior, especially Americans.

  “You know,” he said finally, “you really should find somewhere else to stay when you’re in Rome. The entire world knows about this safe flat, which means it isn’t a safe flat at all.”

  “I like the view.”

  “I can see why.”

  Seymour returned his gaze to the darkened rooftops. Gabriel sensed there was something troubling him. He would get around to it eventually. He always did.

  “I hear your wife left town today,” he said at last.

  “What other privileged information did the chief of my service share with you?”

  “He mentioned something about a painting.”

  “It’s not just any painting, Graham. It’s the—”

  “Caravaggio,” said Seymour, finishing Gabriel’s sentence for him. Then he smiled and added, “You do have a knack for finding things, don’t you?”

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

  “I suppose it was.”

  Seymour drank. Gabriel asked why Uzi Navot had come to London.

  “He had a piece of intelligence he wanted me to see. I have to admit,” Seymour added, “he seemed in good spirits for a man in his position.”

  “What position is that?”

  “Everyone in the business knows Uzi is on his way out,” answered Seymour. “And he’s leaving behind a terrible mess. The entire Middle East is in flames, and it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”

  “Uzi wasn’t the one who made the mess.”

  “No,” agreed Seymour, “the Americans did that. The president and his advisers were too quick to part ways with the Arab strongmen. Now the president’s confronted with a world gone mad, and he doesn’t have a clue as to what to do about it.”

  “And if you were advising the president, Graham?”

  “I’d tell him to resurrect the strongmen. It worked before, it can work again.”

  “All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men.”

  “Your point?”

  “The old order is broken, and it can’t be put back together. Besides,” added Gabriel, “the old order is what brought us Bin Laden and the jihadists in the first place.”

  “And when the jihadists try to evict the Jewish state from the House of Islam?”

  “They are trying, Graham. And in case you haven’t noticed, they don’t have much use for the United Kingdom,
either. Like it or not, we’re in this together.”

  Gabriel’s BlackBerry vibrated. He looked at the screen and frowned.

  “What is it?” asked Seymour.

  “Another cease-fire.”

  “How long will this one last?”

  “I suppose until Hamas decides to break it.” Gabriel placed the BlackBerry on the coffee table and regarded Seymour curiously. “You were about to tell me what you’re doing in my apartment.”

  “I have a problem.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Quinn,” answered Seymour. “Eamon Quinn.”

  Gabriel ran the name through the database of his memory but found no match. “Irish?” he asked.

  Seymour nodded.

  “Republican?”

  “Of the worst kind.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “A long time ago, I made a mistake and people died.”

  “And Quinn was responsible?”

  “Quinn lit the fuse, but ultimately I was responsible. That’s the wonderful thing about our business. Our mistakes always come back to haunt us, and eventually all debts come due.” Seymour raised his glass toward Gabriel. “Can we drink to that?”

  7

  VIA GREGORIANA, ROME

  THE SKIES HAD BEEN THREATENING all afternoon. Finally, at half past ten, a torrential downpour briefly turned the Via Gregoriana into a Venetian canal. Graham Seymour stood at the window watching fat gobbets of rain hammering against the terrace, but in his thoughts it was the hopeful summer of 1998. The Soviet Union was a memory. The economies of Europe and America were roaring. The jihadists of al-Qaeda were the stuff of white papers and terminally boring seminars about future threats. “We fooled ourselves into thinking we had reached the end of history,” he was saying. “There were some in Parliament who actually proposed disbanding the Security Service and MI6 and burning us all at the stake.” He glanced over his shoulder. “They were days of wine and roses. They were days of delusion.”

  “Not for me, Graham. I was out of the business at the time.”

  “I remember.” Seymour turned away from Gabriel and watched the rain beating against the glass. “You were living in Cornwall then, weren’t you? In that little cottage on the Helford River. Your first wife was at the psychiatric hospital in Stafford, and you were supporting her by cleaning paintings for Julian Isherwood. And there was that boy who lived in the cottage next door. His name escapes me.”

  “Peel,” said Gabriel. “His name was Timothy Peel.”

  “Ah, yes, young Master Peel. We could never figure out why you were spending so much time with him. And then we realized he was exactly the same age as the son you lost to the bomb in Vienna.”

  “I thought we were talking about you, Graham.”

  “We are,” replied Seymour.

  He then reminded Gabriel, needlessly, that in the summer of 1998 he was the chief of counterterrorism at MI5. As such, he was responsible for protecting the British homeland from the terrorists of the Irish Republican Army. And yet even in Ulster, scene of a centuries-old conflict between Protestants and Catholics, there were signs of hope. The voters of Northern Ireland had ratified the Good Friday peace accords, and the Provisional IRA was adhering to the terms of the cease-fire. Only the Real IRA, a small band of hard-line dissidents, carried on the armed struggle. Its leader was Michael McKevitt, the former quartermaster general of the IRA. His common-law wife, Bernadette Sands-McKevitt, ran the political wing: the 32 County Sovereignty Movement. She was the sister of Bobby Sands, the Provisional IRA member who starved himself to death in the Maze prison in 1981.

  “And then,” said Seymour, “there was Eamon Quinn. Quinn planned the operations. Quinn built the bombs. Unfortunately, he was good. Very good.”

  A heavy thunderclap shook the building. Seymour gave an involuntary flinch before continuing.

  “Quinn had a certain genius for building highly effective bombs and delivering them to their targets. But what he didn’t know,” Seymour added, “was that I had an agent watching over his shoulder.”

  “How long was he there?”

  “My agent was a woman,” answered Seymour. “And she was there from the beginning.”

  Managing the agent and her intelligence, Seymour continued, proved to be a delicate balancing act. Because the agent was highly placed within the organization, she often had advance knowledge of attacks, including the target, the time, and the size of the bomb.

  “What were we to do?” asked Seymour. “Disrupt the attacks and put the agent at risk? Or allow the attacks to go forward and try to make sure no one gets killed in the process?”

  “The latter,” replied Gabriel.

  “Spoken like a true spy.”

  “We’re not policemen, Graham.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  For the most part, said Seymour, the strategy worked. Several large car bombs were defused, and several others exploded with minimal casualties, though one virtually leveled the High Street of Portadown, a loyalist stronghold, in February 1998. Then, six months later, MI5’s spy reported the group was plotting a major attack. Something big, she warned. Something that would blow the Good Friday peace process to bits.

  “What were we supposed to do?” asked Seymour.

  Outside, the sky exploded with lightning. Seymour emptied his glass and told Gabriel the rest of it.

  On the evening of August 13, 1998, a maroon Vauxhall Cavalier, registration number 91 DL 2554, vanished from a housing estate in Carrickmacross, in the Republic of Ireland. It was driven to an isolated farm along the border and fitted with a set of false Northern Ireland plates. Then Quinn fitted it with the bomb: five hundred pounds of fertilizer, a machine-tooled booster rod filled with high explosive, a detonator, a power source hidden in a plastic food container, an arming switch in the glove box. On the morning of Sunday, August 15, he drove the car across the border to Omagh and parked it outside the S.D. Kells department store on Lower Market Street.

  “Obviously,” said Seymour, “Quinn didn’t deliver the bomb alone. There was another man in the Vauxhall, two more in a scout car, and another man who drove the getaway car. They communicated by cellular phone. And we were listening to every word.”

  “The Security Service?”

  “No,” replied Seymour. “Our ability to monitor phone calls didn’t extend beyond the borders of the United Kingdom. The Omagh plot originated in the Irish Republic, so we had to rely on GCHQ to do the eavesdropping for us.”

  The Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, was Britain’s version of the NSA. At 2:20 p.m. it intercepted a call from a man who sounded like Eamon Quinn. He spoke six words: “The bricks are in the wall.” MI5 knew from past experience that the phrase meant the bomb was in place. Twelve minutes later Ulster Television received an anonymous telephone warning: “There’s a bomb, courthouse, Omagh, main street, five hundred pounds, explosion in thirty minutes.” The Royal Ulster Constabulary began evacuating the streets around Omagh’s courthouse and frantically looking for the bomb. What they didn’t realize was that they were looking in the wrong place.

  “The telephone warning was incorrect,” said Gabriel.

  Seymour nodded slowly. “The Vauxhall wasn’t anywhere near the courthouse. It was several hundred yards farther down Lower Market Street. When the RUC began the evacuation, they unwittingly drove people toward the bomb rather than away from it.” Seymour paused, then added, “But that’s exactly what Quinn wanted. He wanted people to die, so he deliberately parked the car in the wrong place. He double-crossed his own organization.”

  At ten minutes past three the bomb detonated. Twenty-nine people were killed, another two hundred were wounded. It was the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of the conflict. So powerful was the revulsion that the Real IRA felt compelled to issue an apology. Somehow, the peace process held. After thirty years of blood and bombs, the people of Northern Ireland had finally had enough.

  “And then t
he press and the families of the victims started to ask uncomfortable questions,” said Seymour. “How did the Real IRA manage to plant a bomb in the middle of Omagh without the knowledge of the police and the security services? And why were there no arrests?”

  “What did you do?”

  “We did what we always do. We closed ranks, burned our files, and waited for the storm to pass.”

  Seymour rose, carried his glass into the kitchen, and removed the bottle of Gavi from the refrigerator. “Do you have anything stronger than this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Something distilled.”

  “I’d rather drink acetone than distilled spirits.”

  “Acetone with a twist might do the trick about now.” Seymour dumped an inch of wine into his glass and placed the bottle on the counter.

  “What happened to Quinn after Omagh?”

  “Quinn went into private practice. Quinn went international.”

  “What kind of work did he do?”

  “The usual,” replied Seymour. “Security work for the thugs and potentates, bomb-making clinics for the revolutionaries and the religiously deranged. We caught a glimpse of him every now and again, but for the most part he flew beneath our radar. Then the chief of Iranian intelligence invited him to Tehran, at which point King Saul Boulevard entered the picture.”

  Seymour popped the latches on his briefcase, removed a single sheet of paper, and placed it on the coffee table. Gabriel looked at the document and frowned.

  “Another violation of Office protocol.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Carrying a classified Office cable in an insecure briefcase.”

  Gabriel picked up the document and began to read. It stated that Eamon Quinn, former member of the Real IRA, mastermind of the Omagh terrorist outrage, had been retained by Iranian intelligence to develop highly lethal roadside bombs to be used against British and American forces in Iraq. The same Eamon Quinn had performed a similar service for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In addition, he had traveled to Yemen, where he had helped al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula construct a small liquid bomb that could be slipped onto an American jetliner. He was, the report said in its concluding paragraph, one of the most dangerous men in the world and needed to be eliminated immediately.