“The Walther PPK?”
“Yes, that one.”
“It’s upstairs in his dressing room,” said Sarah. “Second drawer from the right.”
54
Wilton Crescent
The keepers of London’s telecommunications networks quickly determined that the unprecedented breakdown in phone and Internet service was no accident. Nor was it happenstance, they concluded, that Westminster, home of the British Parliament and most of HMG’s ministries, had been targeted first. From there the outages had spread like wildfire, northward to Camden Town and Finsbury Park, southward to Battersea and Brixton, eastward to Canary Wharf, westward to Hounslow. The British government quickly switched over to its emergency backup system, but London’s residents, not to mention tens of thousands of tourists and business travelers, were largely cut off from the rest of the world. Beneath London, some five hundred trains across eleven Underground lines rolled to a stop, stranding tens of thousands of passengers. Controllers at Heathrow Airport, the world’s seventh busiest, suspended operations and diverted inbound flights to other destinations. At the London Stock Exchange, traders stared dumbfounded at black screens.
If there was one bright spot, it was the traffic signals, which were still functioning normally. Sarah nevertheless disregarded several red lights as she raced down Kensington Road in her husband’s Bentley Continental. She made a harrowing right turn into Sloane Street, areckless left into West Halkin, then proceeded to 27 Wilton Crescent, one of the most desirable addresses in London’s poshest neighborhood.
“This can’t possibly be right,” she said.
“What did you expect?” asked Gabriel.
“Do you know how much this place is worth?”
“Fifty million, in the shade. But it’s exactly where the ten lines meet.”
The elegant Georgian house, like its neighbors to the right and left, was five floors in height, with a wrought-iron balustrade on the second level and a flight of steps leading to the basement entrance. The shades were tightly drawn, and there appeared to be no lights burning within. It was a common sight in Belgravia. Most of the homes were owned by wealthy foreigners and investors. At night it was one of London’s darkest neighborhoods.
They climbed out of the car and approached the door. Gabriel laid his thumb on the bell push. There was no response from within.
“Try it again,” suggested Sarah.
He jabbed the bell push a second time. Nothing. Next he tried the latch. As expected, it was locked.
“I don’t suppose you brought along that magic key of yours,” said Ingrid.
Gabriel drew a pair of slender lockpick tools he carried habitually in the breast pocket of his jacket and, crouching, went to work. Sarah watched a car roll slowly past in the street.
“Is this really a good idea?” she asked.
“Do you have a better one?”
“Someone’s bound to call the police.”
“They can’t,” Gabriel reminded her.
“Silly me,” said Sarah. The phones weren’t working.
They should have made quick work of it. After all, the subject had shed her team of A4 watchers not in some remote corner of the West Country but in Trafalgar Square, one of London’s most heavily surveilled public spaces. Even so, for more than an hour after Amanda Wallace’s return to MI5 headquarters, the subject’s whereabouts remained a mystery. As was usually the case, Amanda took out her anger on her deputy Miles Kent, who had predicted a quick resolution to the matter, only to be proven wrong.
He remained confident, however, that the Russian illegal called Chloé Lamont had not vanished into thin air, that somewhere there was video of her, captured by CCTV. Despite the still-unexplained phone outage, live feeds and recorded video from all of Trafalgar Square’s cameras were available to the team of surveillance specialists hard at work in MI5’s Thames House op center. With Miles Kent looking over their shoulders, they subjected the video to the myriad scrubbing tools they had at their disposal, including two new behavioral programs utilizing artificial intelligence. The programs identified some twenty-five candidates, one of whom turned out to be the MP for Warrington North. None of the remaining twenty-four was the Russian intelligence operative for whom they were searching.
In the end it was a well-trained pair of human eyes that finally spotted her. They belonged to a young analyst who had spent countless hours monitoring the movements of known London-based jihadists and was personally responsible for preventing at least two acts of terrorism. It was the walk that had given the Russian woman away. She had dumped the rucksack and pulled on a jumper and a beanie, but neglected to alter her gait.
The analyst summoned Miles Kent and showed him the firstpiece of video. It had been shot by a CCTV camera located near the Travellers Club in Pall Mall. The woman walked past the camera at 11:16a.m.Thirty-five minutes later, after crossing St. James’s Park, she arrived at her destination.
“Is she still there?” asked Miles Kent.
“As far as I know,” replied the analyst.
“Anyone else?”
“Three other people just gained entry to the premises.”
