He entered the sitting room. There he found three members of his fabled team—Yaakov Rossman, Yossi Gavish, and Rimona Stern—gathered tensely around a trestle table. They were not talking to the walls, only to each other, and only in the softest of voices. Each was peering into a laptop computer. On one was a static shot of a small house, about the size of a typical English cottage, with a peculiar Tudor facade above the portico. A lamp burned at the end of the flagstone walk, and another in the window of an upstairs bedroom.
It was 6:05 a.m. The mole had risen.
63
Warren Street, Washington
Rebecca skimmed the London papers on her iPhone while she drank her coffee and smoked the morning’s first two L&Bs. Somehow, Prime Minister Lancaster’s plan to suspend diplomatic ties with the Kremlin had failed to leak. Nor was there any hint of the impending crisis in the unclassified traffic on her MI6 BlackBerry. Apparently, the information was being closely held—the prime minister and his senior advisers, the foreign secretary, and Graham. And Gabriel Allon, of course. Rebecca was alarmed by Allon’s involvement in the affair. For now, she was reasonably confident she had not been exposed. Graham would not have included her on the distribution list if he suspected her of treason.
Thanks to Rebecca, Moscow Center and the Kremlin would not be caught completely off guard by the news. After Graham’s departure, she had composed a detailed report about the British plans and loaded it onto her iPhone, where it was hidden inside a popular instant messaging application, inaccessible to everyone except the SVR and its digital short-range agent communications system. The message contained an emergency code phrase instructing her servicing agent—the attractive illegal who operated under Brazilian cover—to hand over the material immediately to the Washingtonrezidentura. It was risky, but necessary. If the illegal agent delivered the message to Moscow Center by the usual channels, it wouldn’t arrive in Moscow for several days, far too late to be of any use.
Rebecca scanned the American papers over a second coffee and at half past six went upstairs to bathe and dress. There would be no run that morning, not with both her worlds in crisis. After making her drop at Starbucks on Wisconsin Avenue, she planned to put in a brief appearance at the station. With a bit of luck, she might have a few minutes with Graham before his meeting with CIA director Morris Payne. It would give her one last chance to convince him to take her to Langley. Rebecca wanted to hear firsthand how much MI6 had learned from Gabriel Allon.
By seven o’clock, she was dressed. She dropped her phones into her handbag—her personal iPhone and her MI6 BlackBerry—and went in search of her passport. She found it in the top drawer of her bedside table, along with the SIG Sauer and a spare magazine loaded with 9mm rounds. Automatically, she grabbed all three items and placed them in her handbag. Downstairs, she switched off the lamp at the end of the walk and went out.
64
Yuma Street, Washington
There was much Rebecca Manning didn’t know that morning, including the fact her house was being watched by a miniature camera hidden in the communal garden across the street, and that during the night a limpet tracking beacon had been fitted to her car: a blue-gray Honda Civic with diplomatic plates.
The camera bore witness to her departure from her home on Warren Street, and the beacon charted her movement westward across residential Tenleytown. Yaakov Rossman relayed the information via encrypted text messages to Eli Lavon, who was slumped in the passenger seat of a rented Nissan parked on Yuma Street. Christopher Keller was behind the wheel. Between them, they had followed some of the most dangerous men in the world. A Russian mole with a beacon fitted to her car scarcely seemed worthy of their talents.
“She just turned onto Massachusetts Avenue,” said Lavon.
“Which direction?”
“Still heading west.”
Keller eased away from the curb and headed in the same direction along Yuma. The street intersected with Massachusetts Avenue at roughly a forty-five-degree angle. Keller braked at the stop sign and waited for a car to pass, a Honda Civic, blue-gray, diplomatic plates, driven by MI6’s Washington Head of Station.
Eli Lavon was looking down at his BlackBerry. “She’s still heading west on Massachusetts.”
“You don’t say.” Keller allowed two more cars to pass and then followed after her.
“Be careful,” said Lavon. “She’s good.”
“Yes,” answered Keller calmly. “But I’m better.”
65
British Embassy, Washington
After returning to the British Embassy compound the previous evening, Graham Seymour had informed the head of the motor pool that he would require a car and driver for the morning. His first stop, he said, would be the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown for a private breakfast meeting. From there, he would proceed to CIA Headquarters in Langley, and from Langley to nearby Dulles International Airport, where his chartered aircraft was waiting. In a break with protocol, however, he had informed the head of security he would be making his appointed rounds that day without a protective detail.
The head of security objected but eventually acceded to Seymour’s wishes. The car was waiting, as requested, at 7:00 a.m., outside the ambassador’s residence on Observatory Circle. Once inside the vehicle, Seymour informed the driver of a slight change to his itinerary. He also informed the driver that he was not, under any circumstances, to tell the head of the motor pool or the head of security.
“In fact,” warned Seymour, “if you breathe so much as a word about it, I’ll have you locked in the Tower or flogged or something equally hideous.”
“Where are we going instead of the Four Seasons?”
Seymour recited the address, and the driver, who was new to Washington, punched it into his navigation. They followed Observatory Circle to Massachusetts Avenue, then headed north on Reno Road through Cleveland Park. At Brandywine Street they made a right. At Linnean Avenue, a left.
“Are you sure you entered the correct address?” asked Seymour when the car came to a stop.
“Who lives there?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
