The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon #7)(90)
“You think one of them is a spotter?”
“I’d bet my life on it, Uzi.”
“That means that there’s someone else in the heath who can see him—someone with a cell phone or a two-way pager.”
“Exactly,” said Shamron. “But you’re never going to find him. He’s already gone by now. Your only option is to follow the spotter.”
Navot looked at the screen. “I don’t have the resources to follow four men.”
“You don’t have to follow four. You only have to follow one. Just make sure you pick the right one.”
“Which one is that?”
“Eli has good instincts about these things,” Shamron said. “Let Eli decide. And whatever you do, make sure you get another beacon on Gabriel before he leaves Highgate. If we lose him now, we might never find him again.”
Navot reached for his radio. Shamron started pacing again.
Gabriel jettisoned the Browning and the radio in a stand of trees at the center of the heath, then crossed the levee between the Highgate Ponds and made his way to Millfield Lane. Taped to the nearest lamppost was a snapshot of a dark blue BMW station wagon. The car itself was fifty yards farther along the lane, outside a large freestanding brick house with a string of smiling reindeer on the lawn. Gabriel opened the rear hatch and peered inside. The keys lay in plain sight, in the center of the cargo area. He removed them, placed the bags inside, then subjected the vehicle to a thorough inspection before climbing behind the wheel and tentatively turning the key.
The engine started right away. Gabriel opened the glove box and saw a single sheet of paper, which he examined by the ambient light of the dashboard. Listed on the page was a detailed set of driving instructions—a journey that would take him from Highgate to a headland for the distant reaches of Essex appropriately named Foulness Point. On the passenger seat was a well-thumbed Bartholomew Road Atlas. It was dated 1995 and opened to map number 25. The drop site was was marked with an X. The surrounding waters were labeled in red: DANGER ZONE.
Gabriel slipped the car into gear and eased away from the curb under the watchful gaze of the smiling reindeer. He turned right into Merton Lane, just as they instructed him to do, and headed east along the edge of the Highgate Cemetery. In Hornsey Lane, a male pedestrian in a shoddy mackintosh raincoat stepped in his path. Gabriel put his foot hard on the brake, too late to avoid a minor collision that sent the pedestrian tumbling to the asphalt. The man bounced quickly to his feet and pounded his fist on the hood in a rage; then, after reaching briefly beneath the passenger side wheel well, he stormed off. Gabriel watched him go, then made his way to the Archway Road. He turned left and headed for the M25.
At that same moment in Hampstead Heath, the vagrant returned to his encampment atop Parliament Hill. He spent a few seconds picking through the rubbish bin, as if looking for a morsel of something edible, then settled himself once more on his bench overlooking the cityscape of London. His thoughts were focused not on food or even drink but on the four young men now filing over the footbridge to the Constantine Road. We think one of them is the spotter, Uzi Navot had said. The Memuneh wants you to decide. He already had. It was the one in the denim jacket, black high-top Converse sneakers, and Bob Marley knit cap. He was good for so young a man, but Lavon was better. Lavon was the best there ever was. He waited until the four men were out of sight, then he removed his false beard and tattered overcoat and started after them.
For the first ninety minutes of Gabriel’s journey, the weather had held to a persistent drizzle, but as he crossed the drawbridge leading to Foulness Island, God in His infinite wisdom unleashed a torrential downpour that turned the road into a river. There were no headlamps in his rearview mirror and none coming toward him from the opposite direction. Gabriel, as he sped past dormant farms and grassy tidal creeks, allowed himself to wonder if this would be his last earthly vision—not the Jezreel Valley of his birth, not Jerusalem or the narrow streets of his beloved Venice, but this windswept headland at the edge of the North Sea.
Five miles beyond the drawbridge, Gabriel glimpsed a sign amidst the deluge, warning that soon the road would end. For reasons known only to himself, he took careful note of the time, which was 12:35. A quarter-mile later he turned into an abandoned car park at Foulness Point and, as instructed, switched off the engine. Leave the keys in the ignition, the voice had said to him in Hampstead Heath. Take the bags out to the point and place them on the beach. For a few desperate seconds he considered hurling the money into the car park and driving at the speed of light back to London. Instead he extracted the bags slowly, then dragged them through an opening in the earthen seawall and down a sandy path to the narrow beach.
As he was nearing the water’s edge he heard a noise that sounded like the wind in the dune grass. Then, from the corner of his eye, he noticed the movement of something black which, on a clear night, he might have mistaken for a passing moon shadow. He never saw the one who delivered a sledgehammer blow to the side of his head, nor did he ever see the needle that was rammed into the side of his neck. Chiara appeared, dressed in a white gown stained with blood, and pleaded with him not to die. Then she receded into flashing blue light and was gone.
Shamron and Navot stood side by side in the command post, staring wordlessly at the flashing green light. It had not moved for ten minutes. Shamron knew it never would.