The woman smiled without parting her lips but said nothing. Parish was once again gripped by the nagging sense that he had met her in the recent past.
There were a number of rules and regulations at Wormwood Cottage, none more inviolable than those forbidding the use of mobile phones and computers. Mr. Marlowe and his friend Gabriel Allon handed over their devices without protest, but Parish had to well-nigh pry the phone and laptop from the grasp of their Danish companion. As for Miss Nobody, she had no devices to surrender.
“She left her phone on the plane,” explained Mr. Marlowe on the woman’s behalf.
A likely story, thought Parish. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had showed up at Wormwood Cottage without a phone.
“Cocktails at seven,” he said. “Dinner at eight.”
“Cottage pie?” asked Mr. Marlowe hopefully.
“Lamb, I’m afraid.”
Mr. Marlowe turned without another word and set off toward the entrance of the cottage, trailed by the legendary Gabriel Allon, a temperamental Scandinavian called Ingrid, and a mute woman without a name or a phone. Parish went to his office in the converted barn and sat down at his computer, the only computer at Wormwood Cottage with an Internet connection. He entered two words into his search engine, a given name and a surname, and a torrent of results appeared on the screen, including several photographs. In one of theimages the subject was staring directly into the camera while holding a copy ofThe Economist. The hair was different, but the face was the same one Parish had seen a moment ago—in the forecourt of Wormwood Cottage, of all places. But why was she about to have a dinner with the chief of His Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service? If nothing else, he thought, it promised to be a most interesting evening. Gabriel Allon was never one to disappoint.
37
Wormwood Cottage
It was hardly the way Graham Seymour, director-general of the Secret Intelligence Service, had intended to spend his afternoon. His busy schedule included a meeting of his section chiefs at Vauxhall Cross, a briefing for Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster at Downing Street, and drinks with Amanda Wallace, his counterpart at MI5, at her office in Thames House. But after learning of Christoper Keller’s unusual request for a private aircraft, he abruptly cleared his calendar. He told only the prime minister the reason why. He placed the call from the back seat of his official car while headed west on the M4. Lancaster was in his private study at Number 10.
“Is it really her?” he asked.
“She looks different, and somehow she got herself a Swiss passport. But there’s no question it’s her.”
“I suppose it was our friend Gabriel Allon who found her.”
“It was, Prime Minister. But how on earth did you know that?”
“Because the Metropolitan Police prevailed upon him to look into her disappearance.”
“Is there some reason why no one bothered to tell SIS?”
“It was a matter for the Home Office, not Vauxhall Cross. Besides, Graham, you have quite enough on your plate at the moment.”
Which was indeed the case. The Secret Intelligence Service was desperately trying to prevent a Russian conquest of Ukraine and the collapse of the NATO alliance, all at a time when Britain’s economy was reeling and its public finances were in disarray. To make matters worse, the Americans were pressuring the Kyiv government to accept a peace agreement on Russia’s terms. Graham steadfastly opposed allowing the Kremlin to redraw Europe’s map by force, as did the prime minister. Together with the French president, Germany’s chancellor, and Denmark’s prime minister, Jonathan Lancaster was the leader of what was once fondly known as the free world. It was a role he relished. No one loathed the Russians more than Jonathan Lancaster—and with good reason.
“The question is,” he asked, “why in the name of all that is holy would she do such a thing?”
“Evidently it had something do with her husband’s business. The details are somewhat murky, but it appears he got himself entangled with one of the Russian oligarchs.”
“Which one?”
“Dmitri Savin.”
“A nasty piece of work,” remarked Lancaster.
“Quite.”
“A member of the Russian president’s inner circle, is he not?”
“As inner as it gets,” replied Graham. “Which was only one of the reasons why we seized his British-based assets and sent him back to Moscow after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
“And the other?”
“He has long-standing ties to Russia’s intelligence services, the GRU in particular.”
“What sort of ties?”
