It was a turbulent sea of demonstrators of every stripe, including a noisy contingent of several hundred displaced Ukrainians waving the blue-and-yellow flags of their shattered homeland. Chloé plunged into the crowd and wandered the immense square for several minutes, from the steps of the National Gallery to Nelson’s Column and, finally, to the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. When at last she left the square she was wearing the woolen jumper and cashmere beanie and had shed her King’s College rucksack. She had also dropped her MI5 watchers. This time she crossed St. James’s Park from north to south, then followed Birdcage Walk westward toward Belgravia. She was no longer Chloé Lamont from Toronto, she was Zoya Danilova from Kovenskiy Lane. And she was about to set the world ablaze.
Gatherings of world leaders in London were by nature a security nightmare. The Metropolitan Police shouldered most of the burden, but it was MI5 that provided the critical intelligence. On the morning of the Downing Street summit, MI5’s analysts and field personnel were monitoring a constellation of potential threats emanating from the far right, the far left, the environmental movement, ISIS, Iranian sleeper cells, and even a band of unreconstructed Irish militants. Thelast thing Director-General Amanda Wallace needed that morning was a seemingly unrelated problem. But that was exactly what Miles Kent, MI5’s deputy director for operations, brought her at 10:20a.m., as Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster and four other heads of government and state entered 10 Downing Street for a summit that might well determine the future of the civilized world.
“What do you mean, theylosther?” asked Amanda.
“Perhaps ‘lost’ is too strong a word,” replied Kent.
“Choose another.”
He hesitated, then said, “Misplaced.”
Amanda gave him a withering look. “One misplaces one’s reading glasses, Miles. Onelosesa Russian illegal who’s working on her bloody PhD at King’s College.”
He made no reply.
“How did it happen?”
Miles Kent explained.
“Sounds deliberate to me.”
“The A4 team had the same impression.”
“Did they?”
The remark required no response, and Miles Kent did not provide one. He had spent more than a decade jousting with Amanda Wallace and knew the rewards of holding his tongue. Presently she was admiring the view of the river from her top-floor office, something she often did in moments of stress or indecision.
“The question is,” she asked, “did Ms. Lamont know we were watching her, or was it merely a by-the-book countersurveillance move on her part?”
“She’s never done anything like it before.”
“We’ve only been watching her for a few days.”
“True,” said Kent. “But it looks to me as though she might be making a run for it.”
“Why now?”
“Copenhagen,” suggested Kent.
“She knows she’s blown?”
“Possibly. Or perhaps Moscow ordered her home.”
Amanda cast a glance at her television monitors. All the major news networks were covering the same story. “But why today of all days?” she asked.
“Maybe our friends at GRU headquarters thought we would be distracted.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Were we?”
“She chose her spot well. But not to worry, we’ll find her. The CCTV cameras never blink.”
“In the meantime,” said Amanda, “I need to inform my counterpart from across the river that we’vemisplacedhis girl.”
“I believe he’s at Downing Street.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“Ukraine is his account.”
