The New Girl (Gabriel Allon #19)(70)

Though he was a division chief, Lavon, like his director-general, preferred to lead his troops into battle. Besides, Charles Bennett was a special case. He was an officer of a sometimes-friendly service, a service that had been penetrated at the highest level by Russian intelligence. Bennett had survived a top-up with the vetters, but a shadow of suspicion hung over him, mainly because two important assets in Syria had recently been lost. There was broad agreement among the vetters that Rebecca Manning was likely to blame. But there was a camp that included none other than “C” himself that was not ready to close Bennett’s file. Indeed, there were some in this camp who thought Bennett should be hung upside-down in the Tower until he confessed to being a poisonous Russian spy. If nothing else, they wanted to strip Bennett of his controllerate and put him out to pasture where he could do no more harm. They were overruled, however, by none other than “C” himself. “C” had declared that Bennett would remain in place until such time as the situation was no longer tenable. Or, preferably, until “C” was presented with an opportunity to undo some of the damage done to his service. In a safe house in Notting Hill, an old friend had given him that opportunity. Thus the meeting that morning during which Bennett was brought into the inner ring regarding the operational status of a certain Saudi royal who was about to ascend to the throne. Bennett was now the sole keeper of a most important, if false, secret.

Bennett also knew the tactics, and perhaps some of the identities, of his service’s surveillance artists. For that reason, “C” had entrusted physical observation of him to the Office. On that evening there were twelve Israeli watchers in all, including Eli Lavon. After his brief appearance at the Kingdom Hall, where he had been welcomed with open arms, Lavon had followed Bennett along Stamford Hill to Church Street. There he had witnessed the purchase of a bunch of hyacinths from the Evergreen & Outrageous flower shop. He took note of the fact that Bennett, upon leaving the shop, had switched the flowers from his left hand to his right, so that when he rounded the corner into Albion Road they would be clearly visible to anyone sitting outside the Rose & Crown. The two men present that evening paid no attention to Lavon, but one appeared to watch Bennett carefully as he passed. Lavon, with a whisper into the miniature mic concealed at his wrist, ordered six members of his team to follow the man when he left the pub.

Lavon had continued straight along Church Street to the old town hall before reversing course and making his way back to Stamford Hill. Mikhail and Sarah Bancroft had left Kookies café and were waiting in a Ford Fiesta in the car park of a Morrisons supermarket. Lavon dropped into the backseat and soundlessly closed the door.

“Well?” asked Mikhail.

Lavon didn’t answer; he was listening to the chatter of his watchers in his ear. They were in the game, he thought. They were definitely in the game.



The house overlooked the Grims Dyke Golf Club in the Hatch End section of Harrow. A sprawling Tudor pile of many wings and gables, it was surrounded by thick trees and reached by a long private drive. With a single text message to Khalid, Gabriel made a gift of the house to Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, which was sorely in need of safe properties. There were eight bedrooms and a large double great room that served as the operation’s nerve center. Israeli and British officers worked side by side at two long trestle tables. Large flat-screen panels displayed live CCTV images. Secure radios crackled with updates from the field in Hebrew and British-accented English.

At Gabriel’s insistence there was no smoking in the op center or any other room of the house, only in the gardens. He also ruled that there would be no catering or food deliveries. They shopped for themselves at the Tesco Superstore down the road in Pinner Green and ate communally whenever possible. In the process, they became well known to each other, which was the peril of any joint operation—the exposure of personnel and tradecraft. Gabriel paid an especially high price in watchers and other field assets, most of whom would never be able to work covertly in Britain again.

But some of Gabriel’s personnel were known to the British from previous joint endeavors, including Sarah, Mikhail, and Eli Lavon. It was half past eight when they returned to the house at Hatch End. Entering, they joined Gabriel, Graham Seymour, and Christopher Keller before one of the video screens. On it was the output of a CCTV camera located outside the Arsenal Tube station in Gillespie Road. The man from the Rose & Crown was now standing at the kiosk next to the station’s entrance. Had he walked there directly from the pub, he might have made the journey in fifteen minutes at most. Instead, he had taken a circuitous route full of switchbacks and wrong turns that had forced five of Eli Lavon’s most experienced watchers to abandon the chase.

One, however, managed to follow the man into the station and board the same inbound Piccadilly Line train. The man rode it to Hyde Park Corner. Emerging, he entered Mayfair and once again engaged in a series of textbook countersurveillance measures that compelled Lavon’s final watcher to fall away. It was no matter; the cameras of London’s Orwellian CCTV system never blinked.

They followed him through the streets of Mayfair to Marble Arch and then westward along Bayswater Road, where he passed beneath the darkened windows of the Office safe flat known affectionately as Gabriel’s London pied-à-terre. A moment later he crossed the road illegally, ducked into Hyde Park, and vanished from view. Graham Seymour ordered the technicians to engage the cameras along Kensington Palace Gardens, and at 9:18:43 p.m. they observed the man entering the Russian Embassy. The technicians ran his photo through the database. Facial recognition flagged him as one Dmitri Mentov.