Stone - 25 - Collateral Damage

understand?”
    “I understand.”
    The photographer returned and handed the man four booklets. He handed them to her.
    “Here are passports with new names. You will use one to enter Britain, then destroy it. Use the others as necessary. Your contact remains the same. Now, put on the burka and go back the way you came.”
    She stood up and pulled the garment over her head, then she put the passports into her backpack and the key and instructions into the hip pocket of her jeans. She was led back the way she had come, and she emerged from the cave into bright sunlight. The ISI agent and another man were waiting for her, holding the mules, all now unladen.
    “Get on,” he said to her.
    She got on.
    —
    As the sun was low in the sky, the helicopter appeared, guided by an electronic beacon held by the ISI agent. He waved the pilot in.
    —
    Three days later Jasmine opened the door to her London flat and let herself in. She ran a hot bath and stripped off her traveling clothes, tossing everything into her washing machine and starting it. Then she got a half-full bottle of scotch from the bar and settled into the tub, taking pulls from the bottle, hoping she would not drown.

Felicity Devonshire sat at her desk in her beautifully paneled and furnished office on the top floor of “The Circus,” as the MI-6 building was called, even though they had moved from their old location in Cambridge Circus some years before. A green light went on over the door, and she pressed a button to unlock it.
    A man entered with a file folder and handed it to her. “Architect, this was transmitted from Edinburgh Airport five minutes ago. Our facial recognition software caught it.”
    Felicity opened the folder and stared at a copy of a Syrian passport. The young woman in the photograph might well have been Jasmine Shazaz.
    “She came in on a Syrian Air Force Dassault corporate jet from Damascus, also carrying two diplomats, duly registered with the Foreign Office. She walked away from the airplane before customs arrived, then went through immigration with no problems. She was carried on the airplane’s manifest as a cultural assistant in the Syrian Embassy in London.”
    “So she did travel,” Felicity said, using a magnifying glass on the passport photograph. “Tell our technical section, good job with the recognition software. Where did she go from there?”
    “We thought perhaps the railway station, and we covered Glasgow and King’s Cross, but nothing. Then we checked flight plans and found a small twin had departed Edinburgh ten minutes after she cleared customs, filed for London City Airport. It landed there an hour ago, dropped a female passenger, then took off again, filed for Edinburgh. As soon as it cleared London airspace the pilot canceled his flight plan. He could have landed anywhere.”
    “Don’t bother searching for the airplane,” Felicity said. “It will be a charter, and the pilot will be of no use to us.”
    “As you wish, Architect.”
    “So she’s back in London,” Felicity said. “I think we can expect havoc again soon.” She handed him the copy of the passport. “Have this couriered to Tom Riley at the U.S. Embassy, for transmission to Holly Barker at the Agency’s New York facility. Actually, depending on how good their interception program is, she may already have it.”
    The man took the folder and left.
    —
    Holly arrived late at the New York office, still sleepy and a little sore from the previous night’s recreational activity. There was a folder on her desk, and she opened it. There were two copies of the same passport, one intercepted, the other forwarded from MI-6. Holly looked at the photograph, then phoned Felicity Devonshire.
    “Good afternoon, Holly.”
    At first Holly thought that was a needle, then she remembered the time difference. “Good afternoon, Felicity. Thank you for forwarding the passport to me. Is this a photograph of Jasmine Shazaz?”
    “We believe so,” Felicity replied. “She entered the UK at Edinburgh this morning on a diplomatic flight from Syria, carrying that Syrian passport.”
    “Was it a good document?”
    “We don’t have the original, but probably. A blank passport could have been provided by Syrian intelligence to anybody they trusted with it. I expect it’s been shredded by now.”
    “Any news on where she might be?”
    “Almost certainly in London.”
    “And what are the chances of picking her up?”
    “It seems likely that she won’t