“Youput the gun down,” said Rebecca. “And I’ll do the same.”
Gabriel lowered the Barak and pointed it toward the damp earth. Rebecca was still holding her SIG Sauer to the side of Eva’s neck. “All the way,” she said, and Gabriel, after a moment’s hesitation, allowed the gun to fall from his grasp.
“You fool,” Rebecca said coldly, and aimed her gun at his chest.
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Cabin John, Maryland
It was a Moscow Center–trained move, and a good one at that. A heel to the instep, an elbow to the solar plexus, a backhand to the nose, all in the blink of an eye. Too late, Gabriel seized hold of the gun and tried to tear it from Rebecca’s hands. The shot struck Eva in the Russian way, in the nape of her neck, and she crumpled to the wet earth.
Rebecca sprayed two more rounds harmlessly into the trees as Gabriel, still clutching the SIG Sauer, drove her backward down the footpath. Together they plunged into the frigid waters of the Potomac. The gun was beneath the surface. It recoiled in Gabriel’s grasp as four tiny torpedoes streaked toward Swainson Island.
By Gabriel’s count, three rounds remained in the magazine. Rebecca’s face was beneath the dark, rushing waters. Her eyes were open and she was screaming at him in a rage, making no effort to conserve her breath. Gabriel pushed her deeper as two more shots split the channel.
A single round remained. It escaped the gun as the last breath escaped Rebecca’s lungs. As Gabriel lifted her from the water, he heard footfalls on the path. In his madness, he expected it was Philby come to save his daughter, but it was only Mikhail Abramov and Eli Lavon, come to save him.
Rebecca, choking on river water, fell to her knees at the base of the sycamore. Gabriel hurled her gun into the channel and started up the path toward the car. Only later did he realize he was counting the steps. There were one hundred and twenty-two.
Part Four
The Woman from Andalusia
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Cabin John, Maryland
A jogger made the discovery at eleven fifteen. She called 911, and the operator called the U.S. Park Police, which had jurisdiction. The officers found three bodies, two men and a young woman, all with gunshot wounds. The men were in street clothes; the woman, in brightly colored athletic wear. She had been shot once in the back of the head, in contrast to the men, who had each been shot twice. There were no vehicles in the car park, and a preliminary search of the crime scene produced no identification. It did, however, produce two Russian-made pistols—a Tokarev and a Makarov—and, curiously, a True Value shovel.
The blade looked new, and on the handle was a spotless price tag with the name of the store where it was purchased. One of the officers rang the manager and asked whether he had recently sold a shovel to two men or a woman in brightly colored athletic wear. No, said the manager, but he had sold one that very morning to a woman in a business suit and a tan overcoat.
“Cash or charge?”
“Cash.”
“Can you describe her?”
“Fifty-something, very blue eyes. And an accent,” the manager added.
“Russian, by any chance?”
“English.”
“Do you have video?”
“What do you think?”
The officer made the drive from the crime scene to the hardware store in four minutes flat. Along the way he made contact with his shift supervisor and expressed his opinion that something significant had occurred on the banks of the river that morning—more significant, even, than the loss of three lives—and that the FBI needed to be brought into the picture immediately. His supervisor concurred and rang Bureau headquarters, which was already on war footing.
The first FBI agent to arrive at the crime scene was none other than Donald McManus. At 11:50 a.m. he confirmed that the dead woman was the same woman he had seen earlier that morning at the Shell station on Wisconsin Avenue. And at 12:10 p.m., after viewing the video from the hardware store, he confirmed that the woman who purchased the shovel was the same woman who called the Russian Embassy from the gas station’s pay phone.
But who was she? McManus rushed a copy of the video back to FBI Headquarters to begin the process of trying to attach a name to the woman’s face. The chief of the National Security Branch took one look at the video, however, and told McManus not to bother. The woman was MI6’s Washington Head of Station.
“Rebecca Manning?” asked Donald McManus, incredulous. “Are you sure it’s her?”
“I had coffee with her last week.”
“Did you tell her anything classified?”
