“The fire will take care of that. And remember,” Gabriel added, “take your time with the investigation. It’s never good to rush in a situation like this.”
That was midmorning of the Friday, the same morning a shade was drawn in the window of an apartment in Vienna. The following Tuesday evening, a telephone rang in the same apartment, and a caller asked to speak to a woman who did not reside there. The next morning the members of Gabriel’s team boarded flights for five different European cities. All, however, would eventually make their way to the same destination. It was Sabine, the girl of their dreams.
33
Tenleytown, Washington
Rebecca Manning awoke the next morning with a start. She had been dreaming, unpleasantly, but as always she had no memory of the subject matter. Outside her bedroom window the sky was dishwater gray. She checked the time on her personal iPhone. It was six fifteen, eleven fifteen at Vauxhall Cross. The time difference meant her day typically started early. In fact, it was rare she was permitted to sleep so late.
Rising, she pulled on a robe against the chill and padded downstairs to the kitchen, where she smoked her first L&B of the day while waiting for the coffee to brew. The house she rented was on Warren Street, in the section of Northwest Washington known as Tenleytown. She had inherited it from a consular officer who had lived there with his wife and two young children. It was quite small, about the size of a typical English cottage, with a peculiar Tudor facade above the portico. At the end of the flagstone walkway stood an iron lamp, and across the street was a communal green garden. The lamp burned weakly, almost invisibly, in the flat light of morning. Rebecca had switched it on the previous evening and had neglected to switch it off again before going to bed.
She drank her coffee from a bowl, with frothy steamed milk, and skimmed the headlines on her iPhone. There were no more stories about Alistair’s death. The news from America was the usual fare—a looming government shutdown, another school shooting, moral outrage over a presidential tryst with an adult film star. Like most MI6 officers who served in Washington, Rebecca had come to respect the professionalism and immense technical capabilities of America’s intelligence community, even if she didn’t always agree with the underlying policy priorities. She found less to admire, however, in America’s culture and politics. It was a crude and unsophisticated country, she thought, always lurching from crisis to crisis, seemingly unaware of the fact its power was fading. The postwar global security and economic institutions America had so painstakingly built were crumbling. Soon they would be swept away, and with them would go the Pax Americana. MI6 was already planning for the post-American world. So, too, was Rebecca.
She carried the bowl of coffee upstairs to her room and pulled on a cold-weather tracksuit and a pair of Nike trainers. Despite her pack-a-day habit, she was an avid runner. She saw no contradiction in the two activities; she only hoped that one might counteract the effects of the other. Downstairs, she zipped her iPhone, a house key, and a ten-dollar bill into the pocket of her trousers. On her way out the door, she switched off the lamp at the end of the walk.
Sunlight was starting to seep through the clouds. She performed a few halfhearted stretching exercises beneath the shelter of the portico while scanning the quiet street. Under the rules of the Anglo-American intelligence accord, the FBI was not supposed to follow her or keep watch on her home. Still, she always checked to make certain the Americans were living up to their word. It wasn’t difficult; the street offered little protection for watchers. Commuters used it occasionally, but only residents and their guests and housekeepers ever parked there. Rebecca kept a detailed mental catalogue of the vehicles and their license plates. She had always been good at memory games, especially games involving numbers.
She set out at an easy pace along Warren Street and then turned onto Forty-Second and followed it to Nebraska Avenue. As always, her pace slowed as she passed the house on the corner, a large three-story colonial with tan brick, white trim, black shutters, and a stubby addition on the southern-facing flank.
The addition had not been there in 1949 when a deeply respected MI6 officer, a man who had helped to build America’s intelligence capability during World War II, moved into the house with his long-suffering wife and young children. It was soon a popular gathering spot for Washington’s intelligence elite, a place where secrets flowed as easily as the martinis and the wine, secrets that eventually found their way to Moscow Center. On a warm late-spring evening in 1951, the deeply respected MI6 officer removed a hand trowel from the potting shed in the rear garden. Then, from a hiding place in the basement, he retrieved his miniature KGB camera and supply of Russian film. He concealed the items in a metal canister and drove into the Maryland countryside, where he buried the evidence of his treachery in a shallow grave.
Down by the river near Swainson Island, at the base of an enormous sycamore tree. The stuff is probably still there if you look...
Rebecca continued along Nebraska Avenue, past the Department of Homeland Security, around Ward Circle, and through the campus of American University. The rear entrance of the sprawling Russian Embassy compound, with its enormous SVRrezidenturaand permanent FBI surveillance presence, was on Tunlaw Road in Glover Park. From there, she headed south to Georgetown. The streets of the West Village were still quiet, but rush-hour traffic was pouring across Key Bridge onto M Street.
The sun was now shining brightly. Rebecca entered Dean & DeLuca and ordered a café latte and carried it outside to a cobbled alleyway stretching between M Street and the C&O Canal. She sat down next to three young women dressed, as she was, in athletic wear. There was a yoga studio on the opposite side of M Street, thirty-one paces from the table where Rebecca now sat, ninety-three feet exactly. The class the three young women would be attending commenced at 7:45. It would be taught by a Brazilian citizen named Eva Fernandes, a trim, blond, strikingly attractive woman who was at that moment walking along the sunlit pavement, an athletic bag over her shoulder.
Rebecca took out her iPhone and checked the time. It was 7:23. For the next several minutes she drank her coffee and saw to a few personal e-mails and texts while trying to block out the conversation of the three women at the next table. They really were insufferable, she thought, these pampered millennial snowflakes with their yoga mats and their designer leggings and their contempt for concepts such as hard work and competition. She only wished she’d brought along a packet of L&Bs. One whiff of smoke would have sent them scurrying.
It was now 7:36. Rebecca sent one final text before returning the phone to her pocket. It rang a few seconds later, giving her a terrible start. It was Andrew Crawford, a junior officer from the station.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“Not at all. Just out for a run.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to cut it short. Our friend from Virginia would like a word.”
“Can you give me a hint?”
“NSA is picking up rumblings from AQAP.” Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula. “Apparently, they’re rather interested in getting back in the game. It seems London is in their sights.”
“What time does he want to see me?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
She swore softly.
“Where are you?”
“Georgetown.”
“Don’t move, I’ll send a car for you.”
Rebecca killed the connection and watched the three young snowflakes floating across the street. The spigot was open again, the cloud had lifted. She thought about the house on Nebraska Avenue and the man, the deeply respected MI6 officer, burying his camera in the Maryland countryside.The stuff is probably still there if you look... Perhaps one day she would do just that.
34
Strasbourg, France
