The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon #7)(89)

HAMPSTEAD HEATH: 10:25 P.M., CHRISTMAS EVE



He parked where they told him to park, in the Constantine Road at the southern tip of Hampstead Heath. There was no other traffic moving in the street, and Gabriel, as he had made his final approach, detected no signs of surveillance, opposition or friendly. He shut off the engine and pressed the interior trunk release, then opened the center console hatch and dropped the keys inside. A gentle rain had started to fall. As he stepped outside, he cursed himself for failing to bring a hat.

He walked to the back of the car and removed the first duffel. As he was reaching for the second, he heard noises at his back and wheeled around to find a pack of young carolers advancing festively toward him. For a mad instant he wondered whether they might be the Sphinx’s watchers but quickly dismissed that notion as they bade him a Happy Christmas and paraded obliviously by. He placed the second bag in the street and closed the trunk. The carolers were now singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” outside a small brick cottage strung with holiday lights. A sign in the window read: GIVE US PEACE IN OUR TIME.

Gabriel towed the duffel bags a few yards along the street, then crossed a footbridge over a set of sunken railroad tracks and entered the heath. To his right was a darkened running track. In the cement esplanade outside the padlocked gate, four immigrant men in their twenties were kicking a football about beneath the amber glow of a sodium lamp. They appeared to pay Gabriel no heed as he labored past and started up the slope of Parliament Hill, toward the bench where they had told him to wait for their next contact. He arrived to find it occupied by a small man with a frayed coat and matted beard. His accent, when he spoke to Gabriel, was East London and leaden with drink.

“Happy Christmas, mate. What can I do for you?”

“You can get off the bench.”

“It’s my bench tonight.”

“Not anymore,” said Gabriel. “Move.”

“Piss off.”

Gabriel drew Adrian Carter’s Browning Hi-Power and leveled it at the man’s head. “Get the f*ck out of here and forget you ever saw me. Do you understand?”

“Loud and f*cking clear.”

The man got quickly to his feet and melted into the darkness of the Heath. Gabriel ran his hand along the back and underside of the bench and found a mobile phone taped to the bottom of the seat on the left side. He quickly removed the battery and searched the phone for any concealed explosive charges. Then he reconnected the battery and pressed the POWER button. When the telephone was back online, he spoke quietly into his throat microphone.

“Nokia E50.”

“Number?” asked Uzi Navot.

Gabriel recited it.

“Any recent activity.”

“It’s clean.”

“Text activity?”

“Nothing.”

Gabriel stared down at the lights of London and waited for the phone to ring. Fifteen minutes later, he heard a thin, tinny version of the Adhan, the Muslim call to prayer. He silenced it with a press of a button and raised the phone to his ear. It took them only thirty seconds to deliver the next set of instructions. Gabriel dropped the phone into the rubbish bin next to the bench, then took hold of the duffel bags and started walking.





At the makeshift command center inside the Israeli embassy, Uzi Navot laid down the handset of his secure radio and snatched up the receiver of his telephone. He quickly dialed a number for Thames House, the riverfront headquarters of MI5, and ten seconds later heard the voice of Graham Seymour.

“Where is he now?” Seymour asked.

“Heading across Hampstead Heath toward Highgate. They just told him that if he has a radio or a weapon on him at the next stop, Elizabeth Halton will be executed immediately. In a few seconds he’s going to be off the air.”

“What can we do for you?”

“Trace a telephone.”

“Give me everything you have on it.”

Navot gave Seymour the model and telephone number.

“I don’t suppose they were foolish enough to leave any information in the calling history.”

“The phone was clean, Graham.”

“We’ll run it and see if we come up with anything. But I wouldn’t hold out much hope. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of jihadists in our local telecommunications industry. They’re damned clever when it comes to covering their tracks with phones.”

“Just give us anything you come up with.”

Navot slammed down the phone and picked up the radio handset again. He grunted a few words in terse Hebrew, then looked at Shamron. He was pacing the room slowly, leaning heavily on his cane.

“You’re wasting your time chasing that phone, Uzi. You should be chasing the watchers instead.”

“I know, boss. But where are the watchers?”

Shamron stopped in front of a computer monitor and peered at a grainy night-vision image of four young men playing football outside the padlocked Hampstead Heath running track.

“At least one of them is right there in front of you, Uzi.”

“We’ve had them under watch since before Gabriel arrived. No phone calls. No text messaging. Only football.”

“Then you should assume that’s what the Sphinx told him to do,” Shamron said. “That’s the way I would have done it—an old-school, physical signal. If Gabriel is clean, keep playing football. If Gabriel is being followed, have an argument of some sort. If Gabriel has a radio, take a cigarette break.” Shamron poked at the screen. “Like that boy is doing right there.”