“Life is very black and white for you, isn’t it?”
“Only when it comes to fascists.” Gabriel started toward the door.
“The deal,” said Seymour, “is contingent on one thing.”
Gabriel stopped and turned. “What’s that?”
“Sergei Morosov. You have him, the Russians want him.”
“You can’t be serious.”
With his expression, Seymour made clear he was.
“I wish I could help you,” said Gabriel, “but Sergei Morosov is dead. Remember? Tell Rebecca I’m sorry, but she’ll just have to spend the rest of her life here in Britain.”
“Why don’t you tell her yourself.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said you wanted a word with her.”
“I do.”
“As it turns out,” said Seymour, “she’d like one with you, too.”
87
Scottish Highlands
Gabriel spent that night at the safe flat on the Bayswater Road and in the morning boarded a military transport plane at RAF Northholt, on the fringes of Greater London. His MI6 security detail gave him no inkling of their destination, but the long duration of the flight, and the lay of the land below, left the far north of Scotland as the only possibility. Rebecca Manning, it seemed, had been banished to the end of the realm.
At last, Gabriel glimpsed a stretch of golden sand and a small town by the sea and two runways carved like a sidelong X into a patchwork quilt of farmland. It was RAF Lossiemouth. A caravan of Range Rovers waited on the windblown tarmac. They drove for several miles through gentle hills covered in heather and gorse, until finally they arrived at the gate of a remote country manor. It looked like something MI6 had borrowed during the war and conveniently forgotten to return.
Behind the double fence, guards in plain clothes patrolled broad green lawns. Inside, a disagreeable man called Burns briefed Gabriel on matters related to security and the prisoner’s state of mind.
“Sign this,” he said, placing a document beneath Gabriel’s nose.
“What is it?”
“A declaration that you will never discuss anything you have seen or heard today.”
“I’m a citizen of the State of Israel.”
“That doesn’t matter, we’ll think of something.”
The chamber to which Gabriel was eventually led was not quite a dungeon, but it might well have been one once. It was reached by a long and twisting series of stone steps that smelled of damp and drains. The original stone walls had been paved over with smooth concrete. The paint was white as bone—as white, thought Gabriel, as apuebloblancoin the hills of Andalusia. The overhead lights burned with the intensity of surgical lamps and hummed with current. Cameras peered down from the corners, and a couple of guards kept watch from an anteroom through a panel of shatterproof one-way glass.
A chair had been left for Gabriel against the bars of Rebecca’s cell. There was a cot, neatly made up, and a small table piled with old paperback novels. There were several newspapers, too; Rebecca, it seemed, had been following the progress of her case. She wore a pair of loose-fitting corduroy trousers and a heavy Scottish sweater against the cold. She looked smaller than when Gabriel had seen her last, and very thin, as though she had embarked on a hunger strike to win her freedom. She had no makeup on her face, and her hair hung straight and limp. Gabriel was not sure she deserved all this. Philby, perhaps, but not the child of treason.
After a moment’s pointed hesitation, Gabriel reluctantly accepted the hand she thrust between the bars. Her palm was coarse and dry. “Please sit,” she suggested affably and Gabriel, again with hesitation, lowered himself into the chair. A guard brought him tea. It was milky and sweet. The mug was lethally heavy.
“Nothing for you?” he asked.
“I’m only allowed at mealtime.” Intentionally or not, she had forsaken her English accent. She looked and sounded very French. “It seems a silly rule to me, but there you are.”
“If it bothers you—”
“No, please,” she insisted. “It must have been a long trip. Or perhaps not,” she added. “To tell you the truth, I have no idea where I am.”
