“That’s where you’re wrong,” replied Lancaster, and walked out of the room.
“Well,” said Christopher, “that went about as well as could be expected.”
“If I were in his shoes,” admitted Graham, “I would have done the same thing.”
“Does that mean we’re not going back to Vauxhall Cross?”
“We’re not going anywhere, Christopher.”
He went to the window and searched the sky. “Do you remember the IRA mortar attack in ninety-one?”
“Like it was yesterday.”
Christopher lowered his gaze toward the spot in Number 10’s walled garden where the shell had landed. “They came damn close, didn’t they? Thirty more yards and...”
He left the thought unfinished. Graham finished it for him.“Thirty more yards, and John Major and his entire Cabinet might well have been killed.”
“I always liked John Major.”
“I’m sure he feels the same about you, Christopher.”
He wandered over to the sideboard and removed the stopper from the crystal decanter.
“May I ask what you’re doing?” inquired Graham.
“Helping myself to the prime minister’s Macallan. What does it look like?”
“Perhaps you should do something a bit more productive.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Call your friend Gabriel,” said Graham. “Tell him to find those bloody drones.”
The lines had been drawn with care. There were ten in all, radiating outward like the hands of a clock from the same fixed point. Most of the lines—eight, to be precise—fell between the hours of two and four o’clock. One stretched toward five o’clock, another toward approximately nine fifteen. At the midway point of each of the lines was a handwritten number. The shortest line was labeled849.78, the longest2574.95. Gabriel enlarged the image and examined the numbers. They had been rendered, he reckoned, by the hand of a woman.
He printed a copy of the diagram and, downstairs, showed it to Sarah and Ingrid. They scrutinized it in silence for a moment, then Ingrid asked, “Where did you find this?”
“It was saved in Yuri’s photo library.”
Ingrid pushed her computer across the countertop, and Gabriel found the original image. Reclaiming the laptop, Ingrid ran a few diagnostics to determine its provenance.
“It wasn’t taken by his phone,” she said after a moment. “It was emailed to him about six months ago.”
“By whom?”
“A user of Proton Mail.”
Ingrid recited the anonymous numeric address and the date of transmission, and Sarah found a copy of the original email, complete with the attached photograph. The subject of the email washello. The text was one sentence in length.
Thought you might find this interesting...
“Why would a GRU officer find lines on a page interesting?” asked Ingrid.
“It could have been a diagram for one of the recent airport drone incursions,” replied Gabriel.
“Or?”
“It might be a future attack.”
