The English Girl: A Novel

reconstruction. Delayed by labor strikes and the discovery of medieval artifacts beneath the foundation, the project took three years to complete and cost three times more than projected. Harold Macmillan, the prime minister of the day, lived in the Admiralty House during the renovations.
    Most visitors to Downing Street come through the security gate at Whitehall and enter Number Ten through the iconic black door. But on that evening Graham Seymour and Gabriel slipped onto the grounds through the gate along the Horse Guards Road and entered the residence through a French door overlooking the walled garden. Waiting in the foyer was a secretary from Lancaster’s private office, a prim librarian of a woman who was holding a leather folio against her body as though it were a shield. She nodded to Seymour in greeting but avoided eye contact with Gabriel. Then, turning on her heel, she led them along a wide, elegant corridor to a closed door, against which she rapped her knuckles lightly. “Come,” said the second-most-famous voice in Great Britain, and the prim woman led them inside.

21
    10 DOWNING STREET
    A fter a lifetime of service in the secret world, Gabriel had lost count of the number of times he had entered a room in crisis. The nature and setting didn’t seem to matter; it was always the same. One man pacing the carpet, another staring numbly out a window, and still another trying desperately to appear calm and in control, even when there was no control to be had. In this case, the room was the White Drawing Room at Number Ten. The man pacing the carpet was Simon Hewitt, the man staring out the window was Jeremy Fallon, and the man trying to appear calm was Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster. He was seated on one of two opposing couches before the fireplace. On the low rectangular table before him was a mobile phone—the phone that had been left in Hyde Park the previous evening. Lancaster was glaring at it as though the device, and not Madeline Hart, were somehow the source of his predicament.
    Rising, he approached Gabriel and Seymour with the care of a man crossing the deck of a sailboat in rough seas. The television cameras had not done Lancaster justice. He was taller than Gabriel had imagined and, despite the strain of the moment, better looking. “I’m Jonathan Lancaster,” he said somewhat absurdly as his large hand closed around Gabriel’s. “It’s about time we met. I only wish the circumstances could be different.”
    “So do I, Prime Minister.”
    Gabriel had intended the remark to be empathetic, but it was clear from Lancaster’s narrowed eyes that he regarded it as a condemnation of his conduct. He released Gabriel’s hand quickly, then gestured toward the two other figures in the room. “I assume you know who these gentlemen are,” he said after regaining his composure. “The one wearing a hole in my carpet is Simon, my press spokesman. And that one over there is Jeremy Fallon. Jeremy’s my brain, if you believe what you read in the newspapers.”
    Simon Hewitt stopped pacing long enough to nod vaguely in Gabriel’s direction. Jacketless, with his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow and his necktie loosened, he looked like a reporter on deadline who hadn’t two facts to rub together. Jeremy Fallon, still at his post in the window, remained tightly buttoned and knotted. It had been written of Fallon that he saw himself as a prime minister until the instant he looked into a mirror. With his receding chin, lank hair, and sallow skin, he was best suited to the netherworld of politics.
    Which left only the mobile phone. Without a word, Gabriel lifted it from the coffee table and checked the dialing directory. It showed the device had received a single call—the call that had been placed while Gabriel and Keller were at the ferry terminal in Marseilles.
    “Who spoke to him?”
    “I did,” answered Fallon.
    “What was his voice like?”
    “It wasn’t real.”
    “Computer generated?”
    Fallon nodded.
    “What time is he supposed to call back?”
    “Midnight.”
    Gabriel switched off the phone, removed the battery and SIM card, and placed both on the coffee table.
    “What’s supposed to happen at midnight?”
    It was Lancaster who responded.
    “He wants an answer, yes or no. Yes means I agree to pay ten million euros in cash in exchange for Madeline and a promise the video will never be made public. If I say no, Madeline will die and everything will come out. Obviously,” he