“Rebecca?” Seymour called after her.
She stopped and turned. In the half-light, with the rain falling weakly, he saw her face as if for the first time. She looked like someone he had met a long time ago, in another life.
“Is it true about you and Alistair?” he asked.
“What did Melinda tell you?”
“That you were lovers in Baghdad.”
She laughed. “Alistair and me? Don’t be ridiculous.”
Seymour lowered himself into the back of his car and through the rain-spattered window watched her walk away. Even by the lofty standards of MI6, he thought, she was a damn good liar.
26
Hampshire, England
The text message arrived on Graham Seymour’s BlackBerry as he was nearing Crawley. It was from Nigel Whitcombe, his personal aide and runner of off-the-record errands. “Change in plan,” Seymour told his driver, and a few minutes later they were racing south on the A23 toward Brighton. From there, they moved westward along the seacoast, through Shoreham and Worthing and Chichester and Portsmouth, until finally they arrived in tiny Gosport.
The ancient fortress, with its empty moat and walls of gray stone, was reached by a narrow track that bisected the first fairway of the Gosport & Stokes Bay Golf Club. Seymour’s car passed through the outer checkpoint, then a gate that led to an internal courtyard. Long ago, it had been converted into a car park for the Directing Staff. Its longest-serving member was George Halliday, the bursar. He was standing straight as a ramrod in his nook in the west wing.
“Morning, sir. What a pleasant surprise. I wish the Cross had given us at least a modicum of warning that you were coming.”
“We’re a little out of sorts at the moment, George. Today was the burial.”
“Ah, yes, of course. A terrible business, that. I remember when he came down for the IONEC. A good lad. And smart as a whip, wasn’t he? How’s the wife?”
“As well as can be expected.”
“Shall I open your rooms, sir?”
“I shouldn’t think so. I won’t be staying long.”
“I assume you’re here to see our guest. The Cross didn’t give us any warning about him, either. Mr. Whitcombe left him in a basket on our doorstep and made a run for it.”
“I’ll have a word with him,” promised Seymour.
“Please do.”
“And our guest? Where is he?”
“I locked him away in Mr. Marlowe’s old room.”
Seymour climbed a flight of stone steps to the residential quarters of the west wing. The room at the end of the central corridor contained a single bed, a writing desk, and a simple armoire. Gabriel was standing at the arrow slit of a window, staring across the granite sea.
“We missed you at the service,” said Seymour. “Half the CIA was there. You should have come.”
“It wouldn’t have been right.”
“Why not?”
Gabriel turned and looked at Seymour for the first time. “Because I’m the reason Alistair Hughes is dead. And for that,” he added, “I am eternally sorry.”
Seymour frowned thoughtfully. “A couple of hours ago in a cemetery not far from here, Melinda Hughes asked me whether her husband was a Russian spy.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“Nothing.”
