The New Girl (Gabriel Allon #19)(32)

The Russian Embassy in London, with its generously staffed SVR rezidentura, occupied a valuable plot of land near Kensington Palace. Gabriel walked past it along Bayswater Road and made his way to Notting Hill. St. Luke’s Mews lay at the northern fringe of the fashionable neighborhood, near the Westway. Number 7, like all the other cottages along the street, was a converted garage. The exterior was a gray scale—light gray for the brickwork, dark gray for the trim and the door. The knocker was a large silver ring. Gabriel banged it twice. And when he received no answer, he banged it again.

At length, the door opened and Nigel Whitcombe admitted him. Whitcombe had recently turned forty, but he still looked like an adolescent who had been stretched and molded into manhood. Gabriel had known him since he was a probationer at MI5. Now he was the personal aide-de-camp and primary runner of off-the-record errands for the director-general of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6.

“I’m well,” said Gabriel pointedly after Whitcombe had closed the door. “How are you, Nigel?”

“Davies,” he answered. “We don’t use real names in safe flats, only work names.”

“And who am I today?”

“Mudd,” said Whitcombe.

“Catchy.”

“You should have heard the one we rejected.”

“I can only imagine.” Gabriel looked around the interior of the tiny house. It was recently renovated and freshly painted, but largely unfurnished.

“We took possession of it only last week,” explained Whitcombe. “You’re the first guest.”

“I’m honored.”

“Trust me, that wasn’t our intention. We’re in the process of liquidating our entire inventory of safe houses. And not just in London. Worldwide.”

“But I wasn’t the one who betrayed them to the Russians. Rebecca Manning did that.”

A moment passed. Then Whitcombe said, “We go back a long way, Mr. Mudd.”

“If you call me that again—”

“All the way back to the Kharkov operation. And you know I have nothing but the utmost respect for you.”

“But?”

“It would have been better if you’d let her defect.”

“Nothing would have changed, Nigel. There still would have been a scandal, and you still would have been forced to dump all your safe houses.”

“It’s not just the safe properties. It’s everything. Our networks, our station heads, our ciphers and encryption. For all intents and purposes, we are no longer in the business of espionage.”

“That’s what happens when the Russians plant a mole at the highest level of an intelligence service. But at least you get new safe houses,” said Gabriel. “This is much better than that dump in Stockwell.”

“That’s gone, too. We’re selling and acquiring properties so quickly we’ve actually had an impact on the London real estate market.”

“I have a lovely flat in Bayswater I’m looking to unload.”

“That place overlooking the park? Everyone in the business knows it’s an Office safe flat.” Whitcombe smiled for the first time. “Forgive me, the last few months have been a nightmare. Rebecca must be enjoying the show from her new office in Moscow Center.”

“How’s ‘C’ holding up?”

“I’ll let him answer that.”

Through the front window Gabriel glimpsed Graham Seymour hauling himself from the backseat of a Jaguar limousine. He seemed out of place in the trendy little mews, like a wealthy older man calling on his young bohemian mistress. Seymour always had that air about him. With his camera-ready features and plentiful pewter-colored locks, he looked like one of those male models one saw in advertisements for costly trinkets like fountain pens and Swiss watches. Entering the cottage, he surveyed the sitting room as though he were trying to hide his enthusiasm from an estate agent.

“How much did we pay for this place?” he asked Whitcombe.

“Almost two million, chief.”

“I remember the days when a bedsit in Chiswick would do. Have the housekeepers stocked the pantry?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“There’s a Tesco around the corner. Tea and milk and a tin of biscuits. And take your time, Nigel.” The front door opened and closed. Seymour removed his Crombie overcoat and tossed it over the back of a chair. It looked as though it had come from Ikea. “I suppose there wasn’t much left over for decoration. Not with a two-million-pound price tag.”

“It’s better not to cram too much furniture into small places like these.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Seymour lived in a grand Georgian house in Eaton Square with a wife named Helen who cooked enthusiastically but quite badly. The money came from Helen’s family. Seymour’s father had been a legendary MI6 officer who had plied his trade mainly in the Middle East. “I hear you’ve been a busy boy.”

“Have I?”

Seymour smiled without parting his lips. “GCHQ picked up an unusual burst of radio and telephone traffic in Tehran a few nights ago.” GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters, was Britain’s signals intelligence service. “Frankly, it sounded as though the place was going up in flames.”

“What was it?”