“Another airport?” asked Sarah.
“I doubt it.”
“Why?”
Gabriel’s phone rang before he could reply. He accepted the call and heard the voice of Christopher. He managed to speak only a few words before the connection was lost. Gabriel tried to ring him back, but the call wouldn’t go through. He checked the signal meter on his phone. It readno service.
Ingrid checked her phone as well, then said, “No service.” Gabriel picked up the receiver of the kitchen’s landline phone, but there was no dial tone. Sarah entered the address for the BBC into her web browser, but nothing happened.
“The Internet seems to be down,” she said.
Gabriel looked at Ingrid. “What are the odds?”
“That London’s phone and cellular system would crash in the middle of a summit? I would need a calculator.”
“Could an individual have pulled it off?”
“The more likely explanation,” said Ingrid, “is that it’s a state actor.”
“Any candidates?”
“Only one.”
“The question is,” said Gabriel, “why would they do it?”
“They might simply be attempting to show their displeasure over the fact that the Ukrainian president is in town.”
“Possibly,” replied Gabriel. “But I have feeling it’s a prelude to something bigger.”
“Like what?” asked Sarah.
“The director-general of the Dutch intelligence service rang Graham a few minutes ago with a rather dire warning. Christopher managed to relay only a part of it before the phones went down.”
“And?”
“Evidently ten remote drone operators are sitting at ten drone stations at GRU headquarters in Moscow.”
“And you just found a diagram on Yuri Ivanov’s phone with ten lines,” Sarah pointed out.
Gabriel contemplated the diagram for a moment, a hand to his chin, his head tilted slightly to one side. “You don’t happen to have an offline London map, do you?”
“This is your lucky day.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
Gabriel opened the app on Sarah’s laptop, adjusted the location and scale, and pressed the diagram to the screen. The light rendered the printer paper semitransparent.
“Dear God,” she said.
Each of the ten lines ended at a London landmark: the Royal Albert Hall, Buckingham Palace, the US Embassy at Nine Elms, theheadquarters of both MI5 and SIS, the Palace of Westminster, the Foreign Office, New Scotland Yard, the Ministry of Defense, and the official residence of the British prime minister at 10 Downing Street.
Which left only the center point where the ten lines converged. It was approximately one mile to the east of where they were now standing, in the central London district of Belgravia. If the crude diagram was in fact a schematic for a drone incursion, common sense suggested that this was the launching point.
Common sense also dictated that they should immediately alert someone in a position of authority. Sarah tried the landline, but there was still no dial tone. Gabriel checked his mobile.
no service.
“Does your husband still have that peashooter of his?” he asked.
