“What do you think of Abdullah?” Payne asked abruptly over coffee.
“Not much.”
“Fucking British.”
“What have they done now?”
“Invited him to London before we could get him to Washington.”
Gabriel shrugged indifferently. “The House of Saud can’t survive without you. Abdullah will promise to buy a few British toys and then he’ll come running.”
“We’re not so sure about that.”
“Meaning?”
“We hear MI6 might have their hooks in him.”
Gabriel suppressed a smile. “Abdullah? A British asset? Come on, Morris.”
Payne nodded gravely. “We were wondering whether you might be interested in facilitating a change in the Saudi line of succession.”
“What kind of change?”
“The kind that eventually places KBM’s ass on the throne.”
“Khalid is damaged goods.”
“Khalid is the best we can hope for, and you know it. He loves us, and for some reason he’s reasonably fond of you.”
“What do we do about Abdullah?”
“He would have to be moved aside.”
“Moved aside?”
Payne stared at Gabriel blankly.
“Morris, really.”
After dinner Gabriel was driven in a CIA motorcade to the Madison Hotel in downtown Washington. Exhausted, he fell into a dreamless sleep but was awakened at 3:19 a.m. by an urgent message on his BlackBerry. At dawn he went to the Israeli Embassy and remained there until early afternoon, when he left for Dulles Airport. He had told his American hosts he was planning to return to Tel Aviv. Instead, at half past five, he boarded a British Airways flight to London.
Brexit had produced at least one positive impact on the British economy. Owing to a double-digit drop in the value of the pound, more than ten million foreign tourists were pouring into the United Kingdom each month. MI5 routinely screened the new arrivals for unwanted elements such as terrorists, criminals, and known Russian intelligence operatives. At Gabriel’s suggestion, the Anglo-Israeli team at Hatch End were duplicating MI5’s efforts. As a result, they knew that British Airways Flight 216 from Dulles landed at Heathrow the next morning at 6:29 and that Gabriel cleared passport control at 7:12. They even found several minutes of video of his passage through the endless non-EU immigration queue. It was playing on a loop on one of the large-screen video monitors when he entered the makeshift op center.
Sarah Bancroft, in jeans and a fleece pullover, directed his attention to the adjacent video screen. On it was a still image of a lean, well-built man in a peacoat walking across a car park at night. A bag hung from his right shoulder. An American-style baseball cap obscured most of his face.
“Recognize him?” she asked.
“No.”
Mikhail Abramov aimed a remote at the screen and pressedplay. “How about now?”
The man approached a Toyota hatchback, tossed the bag into the backseat, and dropped behind the wheel. The lights burst on automatically when the engine started, a small mistake in tradecraft. The man quickly switched them off and reversed out of the space. A few seconds later the car disappeared from the camera’s view.
Mikhail hitpause. “Nothing?”
Gabriel shook his head.
“Watch it again. But this time pay careful attention to the way he walks. You’ve seen it before.”
